I never actually got round to writing the follow-up to those old blog posts, but I decided to republish them more or less verbatim as they're good background.
Software
As far as the software goes, Zotero very quickly won. I didn't get very far at all with JabRef. Maybe that's my lack of patience, but I think Zotero is actually a more complete tool for research. I suspect if you need to be able to output in LaTeX formats you might feel differently, but for me it was more important to be able to organise my academic sources quickly and easily.
I started off using the Firefox plugin version of Zotero, but as I prefer Chrome I now use the standalone version and a linking plugin. There are binaries available on the Zotero download page for Linux, Windows and OS X. If like me you use Ubuntu (or a variant like Linux Mint), I recommend installing using this method for simplicity's sake.
There's an Android client called Zandy that works, but could do with a bit more development. I'll come back to that.
I don't know if there's an iOS app. If you know of one, please leave a link in the comments.
Once you've installed Zotero, launched it, created an account, and recorded your username and password in the Zotero sync settings (your research library will be backed up automatically), you can start identifying your academic resources.
Workflow
For short essays I use Google Scholar almost exclusively. It doesn't have everything, but it has most academic papers and books you're likely to need.
I start off with the reading list and any references from my notes on the subject and use Google to find copies online. If you register your University's library in the Google Scholar settings you will be presented with direct links. As long as you're logged in to your University account you should be able to get free access to almost anything.
I use Zotero to grab the bibliographical links to the articles (there should be an icon on the right hand side of the address bar of your browser, click it and if necessary select the article you want to grab), and save them in a folder - I will usually have a folder named for the module I'm studying, then a sub-folder for that particular essay. You can also copy the PDF version of the article to the bibliographical record, which is a good way to keep track of your sources and build your own mini research library. Sometimes you can download the PDF directly to Zotero, and it will grab the bibliographical information automagically. I found this feature varied in effectiveness depending on the source website.
In addition to the bibligraphical information downloaded automatically, I like to add a few tags to highlight themes or keywords, to remind myself why I selected that article. These tags are searchable, so as you build up your library you'll be able to go back and look for old articles relevant to a new research project.
A word of caution: don't blindly trust that Zotero will grab the right information! Sometimes the data source isn't great, and you can end up with garbled data or a different article's information. Depending how you intend to use this, it's also worth checking if you've grabbed the abstract. If not, you can copy that in manually. It's worth putting in the time up-front to ensure the library you're building is effective, accurate and complete.
If you have a physical textbook you want to refer to (you know, the really expensive one written by the course Professor and only available in hardback, and yes, you have to buy the latest edition), I find Amazon is often a better source of bibliographical data.
Google Scholar's real strength is helping you find new sources that can add a new perspective and ultimately improve the quality of your research (and hopefully get you a better grade). Type in keywords related to your subject, and see what pops up. Look up the record for one of your existing sources, and follow the "cited by" link to see how other academics have used that article and what their viewpoint might add. Has someone from a different discipline adapted the ideas in an interesting way, and what can you learn from that.
For short essays, you should be careful not to spend too long doing this, for reasons regular users of Wikipedia will already be aware of.
On the subject of Wikipedia (a great place to start your research, a terrible place to finish it), Zotero can also record bibliographical data for individual webpages, including when it was accessed and grab a snapshot of that page. This is great for referring to newspaper articles and similar.
While doing your research, you can sync Zotero to any of your computers, or just access your library through the website. This makes it easy to carry on your reading wherever you are. On the move, Zandy allows you to access those PDFs you've saved to Zotero, which works pretty well on my Nexus 7 tablet. If I want to make notes I either take my netbook with me or print them out and annotate them by hand - I can transfer the most relevant notes to Zotero when I'm back at my desk.
In a short essay you will probably refer to every one of your relatively few sources directly. The easiest way to build your reference list is to select everything in your Zotero folder, then right-click and select "Create Bibliography from Items". Select the format you want to use (I use Harvard, per my University's guidelines) and the Output Method (I either use RTF or just copy to clipboard). Generally you will probably want to produce a bibliography rather than citations. You can then just paste the results at the end of your essay - this alone will probably save you an hour or so of laborious copying and typing.
Conclusion
I've really found Zotero to be incredibly useful of the last three years, and I've now started using it for the big Project and Dissertation at the end of my MBA course. There's a few significant changes to the workflow for a larger project like that which I'll go into in my next blog post.
