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Zotero Reference Management

Zotero is a tool that can help you keep track of your research and create bibliographies

Why Zotero?

  • Citation is often a time consuming part of the research process. Zotero makes it much easier by automatically creating complete reference lists and in-text citations out of your resources
  • Research often involves pulling information from different databases, online sources, and print sources. Zotero gives you a way to keep all your sources in one place, so you can always find what you need--without going through the research process all over again.
  • Zotero lets you organize your sources with folders and tags in your personal Zotero library
  • Zotero makes annotated bibliographies easier by letting you take notes on your sources within Zotero
  • Zotero's browser extension lets you save articles and websites with a single click, and its extensions for Microsoft Word and Google Docs makes it easy to cite correctly.
  • Zotero makes it easy to share your resources and bibliographies with others, great for group projects, collaboration, and conferences
  • Zotero is open-source and free--you will continue to have use of your Zotero account and access to all your resources after you graduate

What is Metadata?

Metadata: Data about Data

A more helpful definition, in this context: Metadata is the information about a source. It includes the title, publisher, publication year, and other information about a book; the URL, update history, creator, tags, and other information about a source (book, webpage, article, video, etc). 

Some metadata is immediately obvious to us: If we pick up a book, we can look at the title page and get a lot of metadata. But online sources often also have metadata within their coding that another computer program, like Zotero, can read. 

Set Up Zotero

There are three steps to setting up Zotero.

  1. Go to zotero.org/download/
  2. On the upper right of the page, click "Register." Create your account. 
  3. Download Zotero tools

There are two tools that you should download from zotero.org/download/ to have the best Zotero experience.

  1. Download the Zotero Desktop App. This is where you'll manage your sources and create citations. Zotero works on Windows, macOS, and Linux. 
  2. Install the Zotero Connector plugin for your web browser. This is how you'll import most sources into your Zotero account. The Zotero Connector Plugin works on Chrome, Firefox, Safari, and Edge. 

Congratulations, you have a working Zotero account!