About Zotero
What Zotero Does
Zotero (pronounced "zoh-TAIR-oh") is a powerful all-in-one tool for collecting, managing, and citing research sources. Beyond its almost magical citation-grabbing features, Zotero allows you to save, organize, and share references, and you can easily insert properly formatted citations and bibliographies directly into papers using Zotero’s add-ins for Microsoft Word or LibreOffice. It's an essential tool for anyone doing academic research and writing. You'll never do bibliographies the same way again!
It automatically updates itself periodically to work with new online sources and new bibliographic styles.
Zotero Quick Start Guide
See this quick start guide published by the Zotero developers themselves.
ZoteroBib
Just need to create a quick bibliography? Try ZoteroBib. It's free, web-based, and super simple!
Getting and Installing Zotero
Zotero is free and open source, meaning its source code is open and continually improved by an active user base. Zotero is compatible with Windows, macOS, and Linux. It is compatible with the Chrome, Safari, Firefox, and Opera browsers, and has plugins for Microsoft Word and LibreOffice.
Installing Zotero is easy:
- Save any unsaved work and completely shut down your word processor (e.g., Microsoft Word), if it is running.
- Update your browser. (Go here to download the latest versions of all the most popular browsers: http://outdatedbrowser.com/en. Sorry, Zotero is not fully compatible with Microsoft Edge.)
- Close and restart your browser.
- Go to zotero.org
- Click Download Now.
- Click to download Zotero 6 for your operating system. Follow the prompts to complete the install.
- Go to zotero.org/download and install the Zotero Connector for your browser.
Librarian
License
Zotero Guide by HPU Libraries is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Portions of this guide were modeled on and adapted from the Zotero Guide by Kyle Denlinger at Wake Forest University.