Presentation given as part of the Zotero Training Workshops, Fall 2012. Original authored in Pandoc markdown and available on github: https://github.com/adam3smith/zotero-workshops

1. Introduction to Zotero
Sebastian Karcher
Boston College, November 2012

2. Section 1
Installing Zotero

3. Zotero for Firefox vs. Standalone
Zotero for Firefox Zotero Standalone
More reliable import from web No need for Firefox
Browser
Proxy support Program starts up faster
Supports direct import of Faster performance
RIS/Refer from web
Supports printing and modifying Busy Zotero doesn’t
of reports render browser
unresponsive
Remember it’s possible to install both!

4. Zotero in an Institutional Environment
Three Scenarios:
1. Personal Computers or Roaming Profiles: Ideal case,
batch-install like any other Firefox add-on or software.
2. Public computers with log-in, wiped on every log-out: Will
need to sync entire library on every log-in: slow for large libraries,
but doable.
3. Public computers, no log-in: Do not install Zotero. Basic
import/edit functionality via bookmarklet/connectors and
zotero.org. No CWYW.

5. Section 2
Getting Items into Zotero

6. Six ways of importing to Zotero
Web Translators (URL bar icon)
Manual Input or Edit
From a bibliographic format (RIS, BibTeX, MARC, etc.)
Add by identifier (DOI, ISBN, PMID)
Add PDF then Retrieve Metadata
Get any Webpage with basic data

7. Data Quality Matters
Things to look for:
Completeness
Full text attachments
Full first names
Titles in Sentence case
For articles: Full Text Database/Publisher>>Google Scholar
For books: Most library catalogs > Worldcat > Amazon

8. Section 3
Syncing

9. Two types of Syncing
Data Syncing:
Bibliographical data, notes, links (everything that’s in zotero.sqlite
file)
Free without data limit (in practice works with up to about 30k
items)
Always with Zotero Server
File Syncing
Attachments (PDFs, snapshots, anything else)
Free up to 100MB
Can be to Zotero Storage or WebDAV server

10. Zotero Storage vs. WebDAV
WebDAV services can be supplied by university IT; a PHP script is
available. Also available via 3rd party provided, often for much
lower price.
Zotero Works smoothly with WebDAV, but many free/cheap
commercial WebDAVs aren’t following specifications
Some functionality is only available with Zotero Storage: File
access at zotero.org and file sharing in (closed) groups
Under no circumstances should the Zotero database be placed on a
network drive or on a synced Dropbox folder