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Zotero Guide

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Collecting and Organizing Materials

Easy step-by-step Zotero guides from download to format citations for STM students.

Collect materials using Zotero:

You may add individual items by using the Zotero Connector.  The icon for the Zotero Connector will change, depending on the type of resource you are citing. For example, if the citation data is for a book, a book icon will appear Book icon.  For a journal article, you will see the icon in the white paper document shape Journal icon Click on the icon to save the data to your Zotero application.
  • You also may add items by identifiers such as the ISBN or DOI.  To do this, click on the identifier icon in a stick with a plus sign  the identifier information in the popup box, and hit enter.

  • You may add items manually by clicking the plus sign in a green circle icon . When you click this icon, select the type of material you want to cite from the dropdown menu and fill out the form with the required citation data.

Zotero Icons on Menu Bar

Zotero Connector Book Icon (example of the book icon)

Note: If you need to see the screenshots in larger sizes, please click the screenshots. It will open up the magnified view.

Organize materials in Zotero:

Now you can create your personal collection folders under “My Library” in the Zotero application.

1.    Click on the folder icon   on the top left of the Zotero app. You may rename your collection.
2.    Click on the newly created folder.
3.    Go to BC Libraries Website and look up materials you want to add to your collection. 
4.    Click on the Zotero connector icon  and see if the material is added to the folder you just created and clicked.
5.    Or click on the Zotero Identifier icon  and input the information, like the DOI (example: doi/epub/10.1177/00405639221135138) or the ISBN (example: 9780809149223). 
6.    Verify the correct information about the material is added to each field in Zotero.
7.    Modify the information if it is not correct (for example, the editor is registered as an author or a journal article is saved as a book, an open-source journal is saved as a website, etc.), and change each field by entering correct information manually.
8.    To save a change you make within a field, press the “Enter” key on your keyboard or click on a different field. Otherwise, Zotero will not save the manually edited information.
 

Here is an example.

Book information provided by BC library search

The publisher field is incorrect in the Zotero entry. Publisher information is incorrect in Zotero.

If we create a note or bibliography from this automatically saved record, it will be like this.

Melissa J Wilde. Vatican II: A Sociological Analysis of Religious Change. Princeton: University Press, 2007.

 

Now modify the publisher field manually in Zotero. Manually modified the publisher field in Zotero.

Here is the updated bibliography of this resource from manually editing the Zotero item's publisher entry. The publisher's name is now correct.

Melissa J Wilde. Vatican II: A Sociological Analysis of Religious Change. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2007.

 

NOTE:

Some biblical or Catholic/theological sources require adding them to Zotero manually. For further details about the citations of these sources, please refer to "Sample Citations" in the Guidelines for Academic Papers at the STM.