Zotero is a free, easy-to-use research tool that helps you gather and organize resources (whether bibliography or the full text of articles), and then lets you annotate, organize, and share the results of your research. It includes the best parts of older reference manager software (like EndNote)—the ability to store full reference information in author, title, and publication fields and to export that as formatted references—and the best parts of modern software such as del.icio.us or iTunes, like the ability to sort, tag, and search in advanced ways. Using its unique ability to sense when you are viewing a book, article, or other resource on the web, Zotero will—on many major research sites—find and automatically save the full reference information for you in the correct fields.

First you need to download Firefox, version 2.0 (Zotero will not run in Firefox 1.5 or lower, or in Internet Explorer). Firefox is a popular, free web browser that runs on virtually any operating system (Windows, Mac, Linux, etc.). If you use Internet Explorer, it is easy to make the switch to this fast, free, and secure alternative, as over a hundred million users already have. Firefox will import all of your bookmarks for you. And if you want, you can also use both browsers at one time.

Next, from within Firefox 2.0, download Zotero at www.zotero.org/download/zotero-1.0.0b4.r2.xpi. You’ll then need to restart Firefox and your installation will be complete.

After installation, you will see “Zotero” in the menu bar listed under “Tools,” and the Zotero logo will appear in the status bar at the bottom right of your browser.

Zotero runs in your Firefox web browser, which must be open in order for you to access your research collection. You do not have to be online, however to use Zotero; features such as notes, search, organization will work perfectly well offline, although obviously you will not be able to view some online items in your collection or to acquire other online materials.

The Zotero window contains your entire collection: bibliographic references and whole documents and files, your notes, and other items like images and snapshots of web pages.

You can open the Zotero window within Firefox in one of four ways:

1. By using the menu item (Tools→Zotero)

2. By using the key combination Ctrl-Alt-z on Windows or Command-Option-Z on Mac

3. By clicking on the Zotero logo at the bottom of the browser

4. By clicking the Zotero icon in the toolbar at the top of the browser, if you have added the “Z” logo to that toolbar by clicking on View → Toolbars → Customize and dragging the Z onto the toolbar.

Doing any of the above brings up a pane with all of your citations, collections, and notes.

You can close Zotero by clicking on the X icon in the upper right of the Zotero window or by using any of the methods above.

You can open or close the Zotero window at any time from within Firefox. The Zotero window does not have to be open for you to do “quick saves” of material you want to add to your research collection.

The left column contains your full library (”My Library”) and your individual collections, which are subsets of “My Library”; the middle column shows the items in the collection that is highlighted in the left column; the right column shows information about the item that is selected in the middle column.

“My Library” holds all references, files, and notes you have saved, uploaded, downloaded, or written. To place these items into a specific collection, drag and drop them into the folder icon for that collection. Any collection can have an unlimited number of subcollections or folders. You can also create “smart collections” that display all items that match criteria you define. To delete an item or collection, just highlight it and press the “delete” key. Right-clicking (or control-clicking on a Mac) on items and collections brings up a menu of other actions you can take.

add a new collection folder

create a new smart collection, which is a collection of items that match one or more fields, keywords, full-text phrases, or regular expressions

rename a collection

import/export collections, change Zotero preferences, and view information about Zotero (including version and credits)

your Zotero library, which holds every item you have added

a collection (a subset of your library)

manually add an item

add this web page to your collection

add a link to this web page (this is like a bookmark, unlike adding the web page as a full item using , which can accept full citation information, multiple notes, and attachments)

take a snapshot of the current web page (snapshots can be dragged and dropped into any folder or item)

add a stand-alone note

note

book

journal article

newspaper article

film

file

link to a file

link to a web page

snapshot of a web page

these are just the most popular item types; other icons, for artwork, audio, etc. will appear if they are added to your library

toggle in and out of full screen mode

close the Zotero window

takes you to the web address associated with the item (if there is one)

attempts to find an article or book in your local library (using OpenURL)

citation information, which you can edit by clicking on individual fields

notes you’ve taken on the item (notes are automatically saved as you type)

files, PDFs, images, links, and snapshots of web pages you’ve attached to the item

tags you’ve given the item; Zotero may also automatically grab LC subject headings (for books) and keywords for articles

other items you’ve related to this item

open and close the Zotero window

Perhaps the most important feature of Zotero is its ability to sense when you are looking at an item (or items) on a web page. For instance, if you are looking at the record for a book on an online library catalog, Zotero’s book icon will appear in Firefox’s location bar (at the top of the browser window, where the current web address, or URL, appears), like so:

Simply click on the book icon and Zotero will save all of the citation information about that book into your library. (The Zotero window does not have to be open for this to work.) If you are looking at a group of items (e.g., a list of search results from Google Scholar or LexisNexis), a folder will appear. Clicking on the folder will produce a list of items with check boxes next to them; choose the ones you want to save and Zotero will do the rest. If you are currently working in a specific collection (that is, a collection is highlighted in the left column rather than “My Library”), the references will be copied to that location as well as your overall library.

The Zotero sensors should work with most library catalogs, some popular dot-coms such as Amazon, and many gated databases. Just look for icons in the location bar. (For more information or for some sites to try out, see our Supported Sites list.) The Zotero team will be adding support for additional sites over time. You need not check back here for these extra sensors; they will be automatically added to your Zotero installation every so often.

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