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How To use Zotero: About

Our guide - adapted from others - on how to use Zotero to create and use citations in your papers.

Zotero Guidebook

Zotero Tutorials

Zotero has produced several great how-to videos on their site that demonstrate step by step how to use Zotero's features.

This is a quick overview of how to save citations from the web.

More Zotero Screencast Tutorials

About Zotero

Photo by Karin DalzielWhat Zotero Does

Zotero (pronounced "zoh-TAIR-oh") is a Firefox addon that collects, manages, and cites research sources. It's easy to use, lives in your web browser where you do your work, and best of all it's free. Zotero allows you to attach PDFs, notes and images to your citations, organize them into collections for different projects, and create bibliographies.

It automatically updates itself periodically to work with new online sources and new bibliographic styles.

Using This Guide

This guide is several pages long -- use the tabs across the top to navigate through topics, or the "Print Entire Guide" link in the bottom right to print the whole thing.

Zotero Quick Start Guide

See also this great guide published by the Zotero developers themselves. Also available as a PDF.

Getting and Installing Zotero

Zotero will run on any operating system. It requires Mozilla Firefox 3.0 or greater. Installation only takes a few seconds. To install:

  1. Go to http://www.zotero.org/ and click the red "Download" button. Click "Install Now" and follow the instructions.
  2. When you see the message “Firefox prevented this site from asking you to install software on your computer," click "Allow".
  3. Restart Firefox and you're all set! You'll see a small Zotero button at the bottom right of your Firefox window.

If you have any problems, check the Zotero installation page.

Note: You'll probably also want to download and install the Microsoft Word citation plugin (or the OpenOffice plugin). These allow you to easily cite items from your Zotero library in your papers.

Help

If you have questions about Zotero, please don't hesitate to use the HELP tab to contact a librarian.

We're happy to help you with Zotero whether you're just getting started, or want to become a Zotero power user!

Credits

This guide has been adapted from the Zotero Guide developed by Jason Puckett at Georgia State University Library.

Many thanks, Jason, for your excellent work! Your new book is a major bonus.