Zotero for Your Literature Review

Jessica Hagman@hagman @AldenLibrary

Get the slides: slideshare.com/aldenlibrary

Organize your Citations, Organize your ThoughtsMake your Zotero library reflect how you think about your research literature with collections, tags, and related items.

Organize with Collections• Citations can be in more

than one folder at a time• Citations will always be in

your My Library collection • Collections can be nested

several layers deep

Collection Topic Ideas• Classes you’re taking or teaching • One for each paper or project • One for methods or one for each type of method

you’ve explored or used • Keep a folder of items not yet read or filed • Folders for different theories or schools of

thought within your discipline

Tags• Can be attached to any item

(including notes & attachments)

• Two types: automatic (orange) + not-automatic (blue)

Uses for Tags• Status: to be read, already read, waiting for

book to come in from OhioLINK, etc • Types of materials • Methods or approaches to a studying at topic.

Set tags so you can see the distribution of approaches among your articles on that topic.

Related• Indicate a relationship

between two items• Can be used to link

independent notes and citations

Better PDF Management with ZotfileUse Zotfile to attach PDF files you download from the web and extract annotations you make on PDF files.

Get Zotfile from: www.zotfile.com

Easier PDF Attachment• Indicate a “watch” folder in

your Zotfile preferences• When a file appears in that

folder, Zotfile will offer to attach that file to the citation automatically

• Useful when you use the FindIt! button to get full text

Extract PDF Annotations• Zotero will create a new note

for each color of highlight in the PDF (labelled with that color)

• Notes you add to the document will be included

• Note will include page number and link to the file

Uses for Annotation Extraction• Use a different color for

methods/findings/discussion etc. • Use highlight colors to identity themes across

documents (like a content analysis) • Goal: reduce how often you need to refer to the

PDF file when you are writing and be able to use the Zotero note instead

Writing citations

Citation Creation Options• Using Word? Try to use the Zotero add-on for

Word• You’ll be able to change your document style

later without editing ciations• It will encourage you to edit your citation

information in your Zotero library easier the next time you cite that item

• Will manage the et al.’s and 2009a, 2009b business (if you’re using APA)

Not using Word? Drag + Drop • Drag + drop from Zotero to your document

• Shift + drag for in-text citation • Drag for full bibliography• Uses your default citation style (set in

preferences)

Shortcuts• Preferences >

Advanced > Shortcuts• Copy selected item

citations = in-text citation

• Copy selected items = bibliography entry

Add your own styles• www.zotero.org/styles • Download file > Preferences > Cite > Styles > +

(symbol)