Literature management with Zotero
By
Praveen Vaidya
Preview
 Managing the literature
 What is Zotero? And its features
 Application of Zotero in literature management
 Limitations of Zotero
 Conclusion
Managing the literature
 During the research process, bound to gather a mound of
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literature
May include reference materials, books, journals, grey
literature, official publications etc.
Needs efficient reading skills to allow you to cull unwanted
literature
You have to find a way to manage or organise
Should be able to annotate, cite and understand relevancy
Should be able to retrieve quickly and efficiently
What is Zotero? [zoh-TAIR-oh]
 A research tool for managing online references by George
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Mason University, Virginia
A Firefox extension that provides users with automated
access to bibliographic information for resources viewed
online.
Can be downloaded from website ‘Stand alone’ version 3
http://www.zotero.org/support/3.0
Add on can be downloaded from Firefox browser
When installed, icon appears on side bar
“Senses” the bibliographic information contained in a website
What is Zotero?
2
 When the user clicks the Zotero icon-gathers that
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information and places it on the user’s library of resources
Helps to gather the information quickly and easily
Later researcher can review and cite sources
Has a feature of adding records manually also
Hence, researcher has a centralized location of gathering and
storing references
This, streamlines the research process
At this stage, Zotero can sense information of many of
prominent websites
What is Zotero?
3
 Provision to create subject folders sub folders and tags
 Search feature from any of the key words found in the saved
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literature
Can take a snap shot of the website referred
Suppose, if website is not compatible with Zotero, data can
be entered manually
Organises resources on timeline
Users can choose citation format, such as APA, Chicago,
MLA etc
Can export citations to MS Word or Google docs
Limitation of Zotero
 Does not work with Internet Explorer as IE is proprietary
nature of the browser, but can install ‘standalone’ on
Windows OS
 Tied to only specific computer you are using. To use it on
other computer, installation of browser and Zotero add on is
essential
 Online access to information is made available in new
versions of Zotero, but if you want to switch to another
computer, user has to export-import the data
 Does not provide an easy method to share the information
with others
Conclusion
 Today, quantity of online data has skyrocketed and research
takes place at ever increasing pace
 By automating the tasks of gathering, managing, citing online
references, Zotero or other online reference tools facilitate
more efficient research process
 Formatting of citation is consistent, and typos and other
mistakes common in manual reference system can be
eliminated
 By and large, literature management affords to be systematic
References
 O’Leary, Zina (2010) The essential guide to doing your
research project. Sage, New Delhi pp71-83
 Busha, Charles and Harter, Stephen, P (1980) Research
methods in librarianship. California, Academic Press
 http://www.rin.ac.uk/our-work/communicating-and-
disseminating-research/social-media-guide-researchers
 http://www.zotero.org/support/quick_start_guide
Thanks
Questions?