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Zotero

A tutorial guide for installing and using the free citation manager Zotero.

Collecting References: Books and Articles

Zotero provides the ability to save references from most library catalogs and databases, and regular web pages, youtube videos, etc. with one click. If Zotero detects that you're looking at a book or article on a catalog, database, or a site like Amazon.com, or the New York Times, you'll see a book or page icon appear in the address bar of your browser. Just click the icon and Zotero will automatically save the citation.


This icon will change from a book to an article page, newspaper, or other icon as you display different types of material.

If Zotero detects multiple items on a page, it will look like a folder. Click this to get a list of all the items on the page, and check off the ones you want to save.

 

Organizing Your Library

Click on the Zotero software icon zotero iconto open your library. At the top left is a folder button with a green plus sign. Click this to create a new "collection."

Create collections to organize your references. Collections are like file folders on your computer, but a reference can be in more than one collection at a time. In other words, a book on the Civil War could be filed in your "Civil War" collection, your "Georgia History" collection and your "19th Century America" collection without having to make three copies of the reference.

Creative Commons License

Unless otherwise noted, the content of these guides by Loras College Library, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

Some icons by Yusuke Kamiyamane. Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.