Zotero: Citations without Tears To run Zotero, you need the following, all free: Firefox web browser (getfirefox.com; this will NOT work with Internet Explorer. The beta version of Zotero 3.0 will work with Chrome and Safari, but it s a beta caveat emptor!) Zotero plug- in for Firefox (version 2.1.10; zotero.org) Zotero plug- in for your word processor (download from zotero.org for MS Word or Open/Neo/LibreOffice (not Pages ), for Mac, Linux, or Windows; not absolutely required, but REALLY makes it better) Download all of these and get them installed before the workshop if at all possible! What does it do? It saves the bibliographic information (title, author, publisher, etc.) for just about anything on the Web (journal articles, Google Scholar results, web pages, news stories, blog entries, YouTube videos ), with one click! It allows you to organize every citation you ve saved, attach notes and tags, and create links between items, AND back up all this data to the cloud, and view it on any computer, not to mention sync it between multiple computers (details at zotero.org/support/sync) With the word processor plug- in, it makes it ridiculously easy to add parenthetical citations: click a button, a box appears with a list of all your sources, you choose the source and type in the page number for what you cited, hit OK, and the parenthetical citation magically appears. With the word processor plug- in, when you re done with your paper, you click another button and the bibliography entry for every source you cited parenthetically (and ONLY those sources!) appears, formatted, at the end of your paper. If you change the paper, click update and it adds/removes sources as needed. To a limited extent, it indexes PDFs already on your computer and retrieves the metadata (the title, author, and other information) via drag- and- drop. Step- by- step: Collecting stuff to read and cite online 1. After installing everything, go to a journal website, or a database (LLBA, ERIC, MLA, whatever), and find an article (here, Lego my keego! in LLBA).
SLSSA Technology Workshop Meredith Hanson December 1, 2011 2. To add Lego my keego! to your library (i.e. cite it), click the tiny folder at the end of the web address. A box drops down with all the articles listed on that page, and you can check as many as you want to cite, then click OK. (You can also do this from the articles own pages.) If you click the Zotero icon at the bottom of your browser, you can now see Lego my keego in your library: In the Info box on the lower right, you can add or edit information, notes, and tags. If you have comments, questions, or other feedback on this workshop, please contact Meredith at meredithh@mac.com!
(Tip: sometimes titles will be in all caps, or second/third authors or editors will be missing, etc.; it s a good idea to fix these now.) Step- by- step: Adding stuff you ve already downloaded, by drag- and- drop Perhaps you have a ton of PDFs on your computer already. There are two processes involved in getting them into Zotero, and each is useful in different ways: a) Adding the PDF by dragging it in (to the same place the arrow indicates in the last picture) prompts Zotero to index it (read the text), which allows you then to search Zotero for text inside a PDF file. This process does not add the reference info: you WON T see fields to type author, title, etc. into, but you do see "Indexed: Yes" or "Indexed: No", and some green arrows. If it was handwritten, typed on a typewriter, or scanned, Zotero won t be able to read it. You ll often have the best luck indexing PDFs from JSTOR, and really new PDFs in general. b) Getting the metadata from the PDF is what would put the title, publication, date, etc. into Zotero so you can cite the article (book, whatever). IF metadata is available (always a big if, and again your chances are better with new, non- scanned PDFs), it will be added to your library. How do you get the metadata? After dragging the PDF into the library, right- click and choose "Retrieve Metadata for PDF". Another window will open, a little gear will spin, and you'll either see a green check mark (and the information in your library) or a red X (no dice). If you get the red X, it's often faster to just search for each item in Google Scholar and add the metadata that way, rather than typing in all the authors and everything by hand. So, in the end... If many of your PDFs are relatively recent journal articles, not scans of books and old stuff, it's probably worth trying dragging every PDF you own into Zotero as a huge bundle, then selecting all, right- clicking, and selecting "Retrieve Metadata for PDF" (it can do the whole group at once). For the rest, you'll have to try finding them again through Google Scholar or LLBA, or click the green plus button and type in the information by hand for each one, one at a time. Just dragging something into Zotero doesn't create a so- called "library item" for it. Indexed (or not indexed) PDFs can sit in your library, and be attached (or not) to library items, but only library items have fields for you to type author/title into, add notes, and so on, so if you can't get the metadata, you have to create the library item by hand (green plus button), and attach the PDF to it if you want to. Step- by- step: Adding stuff manually Maybe you have an actual book (!) from the library. If it s in the UH (or another) library catalog, you can grab the info from there (click the little book!):
But say you have a really ancient article, or someone s thesis, or whatever. Click the green + button in Zotero, and select the item type (there are TONS of options ): Then type everything in manually
Actually writing the paper and citing stuff This part is really a lot easier if you install the word processor plugins. So start writing your paper, and when you are ready to cite someone, click the button that looks like r. z and select your format (APA, MLA, Chicago, etc ). A giant box will appear with all your saved sources: Add the page # Click to add citation Once you click OK, the citation appears where you see {Citation}. Don t panic! You can click suppress author if you re citing the same person again right away, add as cited in in the prefix box, or even cite multiple sources at once by clicking the Multiple Sources button. Almost done: the bibliography After citing tons of sources, when you re basically done, click the bibliography button (circled): (From left to right: add citation, edit citation, add bibliography, edit bibliography, update everything, and preferences, e.g. switch from APA to something else) And be amazed as it appears. Aren t you glad you use Zotero now? If you revise your paper, and the bibliography needs to change because you added or deleted references, click the update button (with the arrows), and the bibliography will change to reflect only what you ve cited. Sometimes this will happen automatically.
Tip: If you need to add a reference somewhere other than a word processor (say, a Laulima post, or an e- mail message), you can also right- click anything in your Zotero library and choose Create Bibliography from Selected Item, or just drag it into your document, or push Ctrl+Shift+C (Command+Shift+C) to copy it to the clipboard, and paste it anywhere.) Other stuff You can create a free account on zotero.org to back up your library automatically and view your items on any computer. You can add items manually on the website, and access any that are linked, but can t really get citations out, as far as I can tell. You can search, sort, and organize your sources in folders by class, project, or whatever. You can cite online newspaper articles, YouTube videos, blog posts, and more just look for the icon. If there is no icon, click the Create New Item from Current Page button in Zotero. Caveats Some Firefox extensions will have side effects and make Zotero not work right (it will look like all your citations disappeared). DON T PANIC, just disable that extension. The data Zotero retrieves is sometimes missing a date, an author or editor, or a publisher s location, or has strange capitalization; PROOFREAD your bibliography! It s still a lot better than typing everything manually. Sometimes when you add things to Zotero, it s hard to find what folder they ended up in. Luckily, you can search. There are websites (like CSA Scientific Abstracts, and sometimes Google Books) that don t always play nicely with Zotero, and you may get an error message. Try Google Scholar or Google Books (it doesn t always have the problem), or type it in manually. When you click update in your word processor, EVERYTHING will update, so if you had changed something manually in a citation (say, removing a superfluous mention of an author s name) or the bibliography, it will revert to the original.