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Thing 13 - Zotero

Thing 13: Zotero citation manager: Webcam Conversation

What is  Zotero?

Zotero lets you use your web browser to create your own personal library of resources.  Zotero is a production of the Center for History and New Media at George Mason University, released free for the research community.

Zotero “senses” information about the article or page,  like its title and author. It then automatically adds them to the saved record that you can also edit later.

You can then just drag and drop the reference saved by Zotero straight into any WordProcessor.

It is a Firefox add-on, so only works with Firefox.

You are not restricted to accessing your library of resources only from one computer. You can log in on the web to Zotero.org  and get to your library - and if you like, you can then share your resources with other Zotero users.

When you are somewhere that can be captured by Zotero, a little icon appears in the address bar. You just click it and all the details are added. With one click you can capture the citation, and other information like links to the site. You can even ad a snapshot of the article that can be full text searched later.

This works for lots of fomats, not just text documents, so things like YouTube videos, multimedia, pdfs, and journal articles in databases. You can also add documents manually to your Zotero library.

You can import or export your references from Zotero to other citation managers like Endnote, Refworks and Bibtex.

This 3 minute screencast shows some of the major features. Zotero 1.5 Screencast video from Zotero.org.

Why are we learning about Zotero?

Zotero is another way to save and organise your own references.

It has a free license, so it won’t expire and your data is yours as long as you need it.

What you need to do to complete this Thing

Look at the video, download Zotero, have a play, and tell the world on your blog post!!

How to do the exercise

1. On your own computer, download Zotero v1.0 from Zotero.org. Follow the instructions on the screen and restart Firefox when instructed. (In the workshops, Zotero will be already on the computers ).

If you are successful , then when you open Firefox again, you will see the Zotero logo in the bottom right of your browswer.

2. Open the following web sites in your browser. When you see the Zotero icon in your address bar, click on it to save the items to your Zotero Library

1. Clay Shirky, Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations (Penguin Press HC, The, 2008).
2. Duncan Hull, Steve R. Pettifer, and Douglas B. Kell, “Defrosting the Digital Library: Bibliographic Tools for the Next Generation Web,” PLoS Comput Biol 4, no. 10 (October 31, 2008)
3. Lecture 1 | Programming Paradigms (Stanford University), 2008,  at Youtube.com.

3. Click on the Zotero icon at the bottom right of the browser and have a look at them.

3.  Create a new post in your blog. In the Zotero window, select the title of each  reference and drag and drop them into the post. Publish your post.

If you want to try more….

Follow the instructions on Zotero.org to:

1. create a collection

2. download the Word plug in and use in-text citing

3. automatically create a bibliography from the cites in text you have used

4. attach a file to a Zotero record

5. search a website ‘image’ or saved pdf for a specific word

6. join zotero.org and sync your references (this needs the Beta version to be downloaded)

7. look at your library from another computer (even a different operating system!)

8. check out Zotero’s Tips and Tricks

9. and there is so much more…

See also: Educause: Seven things you should know about … Zotero or the library guide to Zotero from Emory Library