Skip to Main Content

Zotero citation management

How to effectively use Zotero, the citation management software

Welcome! This guide is designed to simplify your citation activities by introducing Zotero. The power of Zotero comes from its ability to collect, organize, and generate citations. Zotero can save you time when creating in-text citations or bibliographies to describe your research process. 

Follow the tabbed links above for step-by-step instructions and tips. And remember, your librarians love this stuff and are here to answer your questions. 

What is Zotero?

Zotero is a free citation management software that can help you organize and cite from research articles and other resources you find online. Zotero can:

Over time, you will build up an impressive Zotero Library that reflects your scholarly interests and courses. Through your Zotero Library, you'll have perpetual access to articles and helpful websites that have helped you in the past. 

Install Zotero

Go to the Zotero download page to get the app and the connector. 

Step 1: Install the apps

  1. The Zotero application itself
  2. A Connector to allow your Internet browser to save citations to Zotero

Tip: We have noticed that the Zotero Connector in Chrome has a conflict with some database links to library content. There is an easy fix: After the Connector is installed, right click on the Connector icon in Chrome (see image below). At the option for "This can read and change site data", change from the default response "On all sites" to "When you click the extension". 

Fix for Zotero Chrome extension

Step 2: Install the word processor plugin

Want to use Zotero with your word processor? Install Zotero Word Processor plugins, too.  The Cite in Documents page in this guide has instructions for installing and using Zotero's plugin for Word (with a video tutorial) and Google Docs. 

Tip: Set up a (free) Zotero.org user account so you can sync your Zotero library across computers (and you are backed up in case of computer failure!). Read more about it at the Sync your Library page in this guide. 

Video: Install Zotero

Video Tutorial: Zotero Basics & Installation

This video tutorial covers:

  • what Zotero can do (starts at minute 00:35 in the video),
  • how to install the Zotero app (1:22),
  • how to add the Zotero Connector to your Internet browser (3:32), and
  • how to activate the MS Word Plugin for Zotero (5:03).
https://libguides.oneonta.edu/zotero
libguides.oneonta.edu
CC-MAIN-2024-33
39505
application/http; msgtype=response
sha1:FFVQATI5FX22QSINWJANQZMVOROUEWSB
<urn:uuid:8fc01944-d51f-4d61-b09b-54b1abf0dba5>
2024-08-06T23:35:12Z
54.88.35.99
text/html
sha1:OBDUBSOHAC27SISKOYNI6QEE7Y2ILISL
<urn:uuid:f04533fc-7830-4288-8247-df6e3390a474>
https://libguides.oneonta.edu/zotero
response
<urn:uuid:53443c02-005a-48f0-9fa0-2bfc0939002a>
isPartOf: CC-MAIN-2024-33
publisher: Common Crawl
description: Wide crawl of the web for August 2024
operator: Common Crawl Admin (info@commoncrawl.org)
hostname: ip-10-67-67-133
software: Apache Nutch 1.20 (modified, https://github.com/commoncrawl/nutch/)
robots: checked via crawler-commons 1.5-SNAPSHOT (https://github.com/crawler-commons/crawler-commons)
format: WARC File Format 1.1
conformsTo: https://iipc.github.io/warc-specifications/specifications/warc-format/warc-1.1/