Tag: zotero

A Quick Guide to Zotero

zotero handout (click to download)

Why Zotero?

1. To create a Zotero account
   Go to zotero.org and click on “register” in the top right corner. Follow the instructions to create a free account. When you validate your email address you’ll be asked to open Zotero and change your password in preferences.
2. Making Zotero work for you
   Now that you have a Zotero account you can add and upload citations to your library manually, however a lot of the cool functionalities that make Zotero easy and awesome are not yet available to you. You’ll need to download Zotero onto your personal computer. If you use Firefox as your regular browser, choose “Zotero for Firefox”; otherwise choose the “Zotero Standalone” with the browser extension that matches the browser you use most often (ex. Chrome or Safari). Once it is downloaded, open it up and click on the gear menu, choose “preferences”, then choose the “sync” tab where you will log in using the account you just created.

Once you’ve created an account, you can explore these great tutorials (https://www.zotero.org/support/screencast_tutorials) on the Zotero.org website.

3. Using Zotero to Cite Your Sources
   Chances are, if you spend time reading an article or book that you find interesting you’ll want to refer back to it more than once in the course of your academic career. Zotero lets you easily store sources that look promising as you’re doing Internet research, and it helps you to organize them in multiple ways.

Adding sources: Once you’ve downloaded Zotero, when you arrive at webpages that contain bibliographic information a Zotero icon will likely show up in the top right hand corner of the address bar.

What if I don’t see an icon? In the Zotero pane, find the button that looks like a page with a little plus symbol: it’s next to the big green plus-sign. That will create a new item from the current page. Equivalently, you can right-click to “save page as a Zotero item.”

You can also change the item type in the right side of the Zotero pane, or even add subtypes like “comic.”

Already have an item on your computer? Try “store copy of file.” This will sync it up with the Zotero server. You can also then right-click on the new item to try to “retrieve metadata for pdf.”

There are also apps for Android and iOS smartphones that let you scan bar codes to add books to your Zotero library.

Tags vs. Collections (folders)

When you add something to your library, it will automatically be added to My Library and to any collection/folder you’re currently viewing. NB: This applies as well to group libraries: if you’ve selected a group collection in the Zotero pane, then any item you add will be shared with everyone in the group. And if you haven’t selected the group collection, it won’t be shared with them. But you can always drag something from one folder to another: it will be copied to the new folder without being removed from the old one.

What’s the difference between a collection and tags?

Think of a collection as a single bibliography, at least in potentia: all the sources you consulted for a given research project. The reason to put these sources together in one folder is to make it easier to select-all.

Tags, on the other hand, are per-source descriptors that travel with each source wherever they might go, and make it easy to find connections between projects – or even to find new projects.

Once you’ve built a Zotero library full of sources, you can use Zotero to construct citations and bibliographies while you’re writing a paper!

One-off citations (e.g. forum posts): Just drag and drop a source item from the center Zotero pane into anywhere you can enter text: it will automatically take on the format you set under Gear > Preferences > Export.

Bibliographic projects (e.g. an orals list): Select the items in the center Zotero pane, then right click and choose “Create Bibliography from selected items.”

Longer projects (e.g. articles, papers, dissertations): If you have integrated citations, you’ll want to use a word processor plugin, which will allow you to rapidly convert your footnotes to parenthetical citations, MLA to APA to ACS, what-have-you. Zotero Standalone comes bundled with plugins for MS Word, or you can download it separately for the Firefox version; there’s also an OpenOffice plugin.

Either way, you’ll have to activate it within Word; how depends on your OS:

• On a Mac, head to Tools menu > Templates and Add-Ins > Zotero.dot. It’ll add a little Zotero toolbar, which you may or may not be able to add to the ribbon. (Depends on your version of Word.) If you accidentally lose the toolbar, you can get it back from View > Toolbars > Zotero Bibliographic Management.
• On a PC, hit the round Office button > Word Options > Add-Ins > Manage > Word Add-Ins > Zotero.dot. It’ll add an Add-Ins tab to the ribbon, containing the same buttons as on the Mac.

Hover over each button in the new toolbar to see what it does; it’s pretty self-explanatory from that point. But, just to be safe:

• Click “insert citation” to search your library for a citeable item.
• To add page numbers, click on a name you’ve selected.
• Press Enter to insert when you’re ready.
• You won’t get a bibliography until you select “Insert Bibliography”; once you do, it will autopopulate the bibliography with the items you’ve cited.

What does the “remove codes” button do, and why use it? When you’re ready to submit to a journal or professor, use this button to convert the citation placeholders into real text, so you know it won’t get screwed up by their citation manager software. Just be sure to give it a new filename with File > Save As, so you can quickly switch citation styles later if you want (using the Set Doc Prefs button).