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Library Subject Guides

2. Find & Manage Research Literature: Zotero

A guide to finding and managing your literature

What is Zotero ?

• A citation management tool that allows you to save, annotate, and format citations in order to create a
bibliography.

• Available for PC, Mac and Linux.

• View 3 minute intro video at. zotero.org

You can download and install Zotero from https://www.zotero.org

Reasons to use Zotero

It's easy to save your citations to Zotero. One click on your browser's address bar is all it takes. After saving citations you can quickly edit and organize using drag and drop.

You do a lot of your research on the web. You can archive webpages with Zotero, which you can't do with EndNote. Zotero allows you to mark up your files (such as webpages) that you save (highlight, create notes, etc.).

The Zotero toolbar is easy to use and works in both Microsoft Word and OpenOffice Writer, letting you insert citations into your paper quickly. It also handles footnote styles better than EndNote 

 

Adding Web Pages to Zotero ..

Zotero is much better at saving web content than other bibliographic tools. 

  • Search for your topic
  • Click the "Save to Zotero (Web page)" icon in the browser toolbar
  • Zotero will bring over some information about the page, and creates a snapshot that is stored on your local hard drive; a snapshot is a saved version of the page, not just a link to it.
  • Once you've saved a page, Zotero will actually search the full text of that page for your keywords
     

Zotero and EndNote

If you already have an EndNote Library but have decided you would like to switch to Zotero, you can easily transfer references from EndNote into Zotero.  AUT Library have an excellent guide to this process: Zotero and Endnote - Zotero - Library Guides at AUT University (libguides.com)

Improving your Library Search in Zotero

You can use a special library link as a 'resolver' to refind things online that you have added to your Zotero library.

In Zotero standalone (not the browser plugin) go to the menu Edit -> Settings - General.   

In the Locate section select Australia/New Zealand -> University of Canterbury and it will add the correct resolver URL for you.

 

Or you can add it manually:

Select a Custom resolver from the OpenURL dropdown list and copy and paste  :  https://imageserver.ebscohost.com/branding/s1165276/FullTextFinder.html  into the resolver text box.

 

Adding citations from different sources to Zotero

  • Go to  library databases or catalogues or Amazon or Google Books or other freely available online publications such as NY Times ​
  • Search for your topic and once you have found what you want...
  • Click on the "Save to Zotero" icon (looks like a file folder in the browser URL bar)
  • You will see a list of titles of the articles on the first page of your results.
  • Click on one citation; save it to Zotero
  • Go to citation, click on Locate, and note how it goes to the full text.

Zotero for Law (New Zealand Law Style Guide – NZLSG)

Download the Zotero NZLSG PDF guide first.

  • The Zotero citation style for NZLSG requires specific and sometimes quirky data entry – something that isn’t unusual for legal styles. Sometimes the ‘obvious’ item type or the ‘obvious’ field isn’t the right one to use.
  • The Zotero NZLSG PDF guide also explains how to add the “NZLSG examples” and “NZLSG headings” collections to your Zotero library.

Who to Contact

Anton Angelo

Internal Phone: 93853

Creating a bibliography / writing with Zotero

 Drag and Drop Quick Copy
If you want to quickly add references to a paper, email, or blog post, then use Zotero's Drag and Drop Quick Copy

Simply select references in the center column and drag them into any text field.

Zotero will automatically create a numbered and alphabetized bibliography for you.

To configure your quick copy preferences, click the Actions menu (the gear icon) and select Preferences.
Within the Preferences pop-up window, select Export. From this tab you can
• set your default export format
• set up site specific export settings
• choose whether you want Zotero to include HTML tags in your quick copy

 Right Click to Create Bibliography
To create a bibliography in Zotero, highlight one or more references and then right-click (or control click
on Macs) to select "Create Bibliography from Selected Item(s)."

Then select a citation style for your bibliography format
 

Choose one of the following four ways to create your bibliography:

• Save as RTF will allow you to save the bibliography as a rich text file.

• Save as HTML will allow you to save the bibliography as a HTML file for viewing in a web browser. This format will also embed metadata allowing other Zotero users viewing the document to capture bibliographic information.

• Save to Clipboard will allow you to save the bibliography to your clipboard to paste into any text field.

• Print will send your bibliography straight to a printer.