Blume Library: Zotero Citation Software: About Zotero

What Zotero Does

Zotero (pronounced "zoh-TAIR-oh") is a free program that allows you to collect, organize, annotate, cite, and share research sources.

Zotero allows you to:

Quickly save metadata about resources used for your research
Save documents and other media from databases and websites
Create folders
Save items in your Zotero library - up to 300 MB of free storage
Use across multiple computers
Share sources with collaborators locally or in other institutions or other countries

It automatically updates itself periodically to work with new online sources and new bibliographic styles. It's open source and it's FREE!

(image: Zotero up close by Karin Dalziel on Flickr under a Creative Commons license.)

Zotero website
Zotero website. You can download the program and browser plugins, create an account, and find support materials.
ZoteroBib
Do you need a quick citation? ZoteroBib, or Zbib, helps you build a bibliography instantly from any computer or device, without creating an account or installing any software. In addition to APA, Chicago, and MLA formats, it can generate practically any other citation style.

Avoid using the Safari browser, if possible.
When saving from Discover and other EBSCO databases, rather than using the Zotero Connector, click on "Cite" (quotation marks icon), then "Export citation," and then "Export in RIS format."

For basic tips about citation formatting and other writing topics, try these sources.

APA Style Blog
"official companion to the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association, Sixth Edition. It's run by a group of experts who work with APA Style ... who publish weekly posts ... on writing, publishing, and APA Style."
Citation and Documentation Guide
Guidelines and examples of citing information using other citation formats, e.g. APA, MLA, Chicago, etc..
Purdue OWL: Research and Citation Resources
Discusses how to use research sources including summarizing, paraphrasing, and quoting. Also provides tips on APA, MLA, and Chicago citation styles as well as using citation tools.

There are other research management programs, free and paid, that you may want to use if you don't want to use Zotero. These sites offer suggestions.

Research Management Tools Free online tools, including Zotero, to help manage research and automatically generate citations.

This guide is an adaptation of the Zotero guide developed by Jason Puckett at Georgia State University Library under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 United States License. Much thanks to Jason for making the original available for reuse and adaptation.

This Zotero guide is also licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 United States License.