How to Use Zotero

Image representing Zotero as depicted in Crunc...
Image via CrunchBase

After yesterday’s post about a couple important updates to Zotero’s SBL style support, John Harris suggested that some kind of Zotero tutorial or “how to” post might be useful. Since this information might be beneficial to others also, the Learning Commons has a pretty good YouTube playlist (48:57) assembled, which should provide some good introductory material about Zotero.

Since the stable release of Zotero Standalone is still fairly new, some help material, even on Zotero’s website, still refers to the software as a “Firefox extension.” The standalone version does have some limitations, for example, in terms of attaching web pages or snapshots to Zotero items, but the standalone version’s performance also seems to be a good bit better than that of the Firefox extension. The standalone version also works with Chrome and Safari. As a work around for some of Zotero Standalone’s limitations, however, both the Firefox extension and the standalone version can use the same Zotero library. So, one can also install the Firefox extension to use its fuller functionality as needed but still use the standalone version for its better performance when simply accessing the Zotero library or when integrating with a word processor.

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2 responses to “How to Use Zotero”

  1. adam3smith Avatar
    adam3smith

    Note that all documentation on zotero.org is in wiki format. Especially with the 3.0 release there is a lot to do and we (as in – the volunteers who have been writing most of the documentation) can use all the help we need, especially from experienced users like you:
    http://forums.zotero.org/discussion/21657/30-documentation-whats-needed-also-volunteers-wanted/
    http://www.zotero.org/support/dev/documentation

    1. David Stark Avatar

      Ah, very good to know. I hadn’t stumbled upon this fact yet. Thanks so much.

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