ULibraries Research Guides: Zotero: Home

What is Zotero?

Zotero (pronounced zoh-TAIR-oh) is a free, open-source citation management software. This means it can:

Collect your citations with a click,
Organize your citations,
Generate citations and bibliographies,
Sync your citation library across devices, and
Collaborate with other researchers.

With Zotero, you can keep all of your research sources, notes and annotations, and PDFs in one place, making the research and writing process more efficient.

Create Zotero Account

In order to access your citation library on any computer, you will need to create a Zotero account. Go to the Zotero website and click "Log In," and then "Register for a free account."

After you have successfully created your account, go into your Zotero preferences in the desktop application and select the "Synch" tab. Enter your account information, and Zotero will sync your references and attachments to your Zotero account. Note that free accounts only have 300MB of cloud storage, but that you can buy extra storage. You can also go into your settings and choose not to sync the PDFs or not to download them through the Zotero Connector, or you can store them locally on your machine and link them to the reference by right-clicking and selecting "Attach Link to File" from the "Add Attachment" option.

Zotero Classroom Instruction

Would you like a librarian to teach your class how to use Zotero to manage their research resources? Contact Rebekah Cummings for in-class Zotero instruction.