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Libraries & Cultural Resources

Research Guides

Zotero Citation Manager

Zotero is a citation management tool that will help you collect, save, organize, share, and cite your sources when researching.

What is Zotero?

Zotero is a free, easy-to-use reference manager tool to help you collect, organize, annotate, cite, and share research materials such as articles, books, reports, and webpages. Zotero is available for Windows, Mac, and Linux. More broadly, Zotero is a powerful tool for collecting and organizing research information and sources.

Visit their site to read more about their features and capabilities. 

As this is a third party software, Libraries and Cultural Resources is unable to troubleshoot technical problems related to Zotero. To find support for any issues, where many issues have been solved by others, visit the Zotero User Forum. Below are more Zotero software support links:

Quick Set Up Instructions

To begin the set up of Zotero, follow these basic steps and then explore this research guide for more information as needed. 

  1. Create a Zotero account (https://www.zotero.org). This allows you to collaborate with others, and sync your Zotero collection across devices.
  2. If you use Microsoft Word, close all Microsoft Office products prior to downloading Zotero.
    • This allows Zotero to add a plug-in in Word during installation, which is beneficial for in-text citations and bibliographies.
  3. Go to https://zotero.org/download 
  4. Download and install Zotero (must have admin rights to your computer).
    • Alternatively, Zotero is available as a Portable App that can be installed to a USB key, external hard drive or cloud folder; this version can be installed and run on devices for which you don't have admin rights. 
  5. Install the Zotero Connector for your browser.
    • This allows fast collection of citations/abstracts (and PDFs) from databases.

Zotero Bib

Just need to create a quick bibliography? ZoteroBib, or ZBib for short, will quickly generate a citation or bibliography. Paste in a DOI, Title, or another important piece and citation and bibliography is created. 

ZBib also creates a running bibliography that will be saved as long as you don't clear your cache and cookies. It's probably fine for writing short undergraduate papers, but it lacks many of the features of the full Zotero. 

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