Zotero: Self-Guided Tutorial

Zotero provides the ability to save references from most library catalogs (including UM's) and databases, and most regular web pages, with one click. (Zotero publishes a list of compatible sites, and many sites not on this list also work.) If Zotero detects that you're looking at a book or article on a catalog, database, or a site like Amazon.com, LibraryThing or the New York Times, you'll see a book or page icon appear in the address bar of your browser. Just click the icon and Zotero will automatically save the citation.

Example 1: UM's Library Search

Example 2: Academic Search Premier, a popular UM database

If you're on a search results page, you'll see a folder icon instead. Click this to get a list of all the items on the page, and check off the ones you want to save.

Web Sites  

With Zotero, you can create an item from any webpage by clicking the save button in the browser toolbar. If the page isn't recognized by an official translator, you'll see a gray page icon:

If “Automatically take snapshots when creating items from web pages” is enabled in the General Tab of the Zotero preferences, a copy (or snapshot) of the webpage will be saved to your computer and added as a child item. To view the saved copy, double-click the snapshot.

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You can also save a web page citation by right-clicking (or Command-clicking on a Mac) anywhere on the web page and you will find a Zotero item in the resulting menu.  See below:

In Chrome:

In Firefox:

Have the book in front of you and want to add it to your Zotero library without having to search for a citation?

If you have a book's ISBN, an online article's DOI or PMID number, just click the magic wand button: "Add item by identifier." Type in the book or article's number, and Zotero will automatically download its information and save it to your library.

It's easy to attach files (like PDFs) to items in your Zotero library.  Just drag the file into your Zotero pane.  Dropping a file onto a collection, or in between library items, will copy it into your library as a standalone item.  Dropping it onto an existing item will attach it to that item.  This is the easiest way to attach a copy of an article to its entry in your library.

Also, you can attach files by clicking the Attachments (paper clip) icon in the top menu as shown below. 

It's easy to add PDFs to your Zotero library and automatically import their citation info.

First in the General tab of Zotero's preferences, enable (by checking)

• automatically retrieve metadata for PDFs
• automatically attach associated PDFs and other files when saving items

Once this is set, when you drag your PDF files into the Zotero pane, the citation data will be retrieved from Google Scholar which will turn it into citeable items with PDF attachments.

If Zotero can't find a match on Google Scholar, don't worry -- you can still save the citation from another catalog or article database, then drag the PDF onto the citation to make it an attachment.