Zotero (pronounced zoh-TAIR-oh) is a free, easy-to-use tool to help you collect, organize, cite, and share your research sources.
Zotero is, at the most basic level, a reference manager. It is designed to store, manage, and cite bibliographic references, such as books and articles. In Zotero, each of these references constitutes an item. More broadly, Zotero is a powerful tool for collecting and organizing research information and sources. Here are the basic steps to setting up Zotero:
- Go to the Zotero website and click the red Download button
- Click the blue download button and follow the prompts to install Zotero for your computer type (Mac, Windows, etc.)
- Install the Zotero browser connector (Chrome, Firefox, etc.); this makes saving PDFs, webpages, or any other reference type super easy!
- Open Zotero and view the Zotero Quick Start guide
- Start adding references!