Citation Management Software: Zotero Josh Wilson Physical and Mathematical Sciences Reference Librarian North Carolina State University Libraries Online guide:

Keeping track of all of your research ► How do you save all your research work? ► Bookmarking webpages is unstable, no easy way to organize ► Large Word or Excel files ► Notecards are great until one day you leave them on the bus… ► “Citation management software”  Saves all references from most databases in ONE place

How Citation Managers Work Agricola Web of Science Saved citations Other websites and sources Saved citations Books from catalog Saved citations Zotero -Access from anywhere - Links back to articles, saved PDFs -Organize citations into multiple folders -Create bibliographies Export:

Different products ► Zotero  Free, browser-based, works with Firefox  Library support available! ► RefWorks  Free for NCSU students, internet-based, available through Libraries’ site  Library support available! ► EndNote  Costs $100+, standalone software installed on your computer ► No choice is permanent! Easy to export between them if your needs change

Different products ► We’ll talk about Zotero today  Easy to use and demonstrate  Stable  Free  Recommended for Firefox users ► If you think another product suits your work better later on, it’s easy to change

Zotero setup ► Let’s take a few minutes now to install Zotero and talk about setting up an account… ► Firefox is requried (sort of). Zotero is a browser plugin: a piece of software that extends the functionality of your browser. ► Setting up an account is required for syncing between computers, using Groups, and backing up references

Zotero setup ► Start Firefox ► Go to ► Download latest version  May need to Allow pop-ups/install  Will require restart of Firefox ► Now use the Zotero button to open the pane

Getting citations into Zotero ► All citation managers work mostly the same:  Export from database, catalog, webpage, etc.  Import into citation manager ► Most modern citation managers work with nearly all databases ► Zotero has a one-click function that makes this even easier for most databases

Saving a websiteSave several citations Save an individual citation Saving a book

Organize using collections and subcollections (they look like folders) Drag and drop imported citations – easy!

Zotero also saves snapshots and/or attachments, which you can annotate

Add notes and tags to citations to better organize them. Sometimes Zotero will capture subject terms as tags.

Not all is happy rainbows… ► Some databases do not support Zotero ► You may be able to export/import manually  Export as an RIS or BibTeX file (or an EndNote format?)  Import into Zotero ► Last resort:  Create a New Item in Zotero  Fill in fields you need

Citations imported – now what? ► Organize  Add to appropriate collections/groups ► Add notes  Expand citation to see these ► Add tags  Sometimes Zotero captures subject terms ► Add attachments  Expand citation to see these  NOT BACKED UP!

Creating a bibliography ► Eventually you’ll write something and need to cite all the references you’ve collected ► Zotero automatically creates bibliographies for you  Hundreds of styles available ► A few different ways to do this…

Drag and drop from Zotero/Firefox into Word…

Or right-click selected citations to create a bibliography.

Or install the MS Word plugin to create a bibliography while you write.

Extra stuff you can do ► Configure preferences  Enables you to locate full text online  Simplifies saving items  Create a Zotero account  Turn on syncing ► Use Groups to share references  Work with others on a research project ► Everyone can save to the same account, create a shared literature database ► Annotate screenshots, manage PDFs

Group libraries work just like collections They appear along the left You can drag and drop items from them Requires a Zotero account, and syncing