Zotero is a Firefox addon that collects, manages, and cites research sources. It's easy to use, lives in your web browser where you do your work, and best of all it's free. Zotero allows you to attach PDFs, notes and images to your citations, organize them into collections for different projects, and create bibliographies using Word or OpenOffice. It is easier to use than EndNote and surprisingly powerful.

Since it's a Firefox plugin, it automatically updates itself periodically to work with new online sources and new bibliographic styles.

Zotero will run on any operating system. It requires Mozilla Firefox 2.0 or greater. Installation only takes a few seconds.

Firefox Campus Edition comes with Zotero pre-loaded!

Otherwise, open http://www.zotero.org/ and click the red "Download" button. Click "Install Now" and follow the instructions. If you see the message “Firefox prevented this site from asking you to install software on your computer," click "Edit Options," then "Allow" and "Close." Download Zotero again and it should work. Restart Firefox and you're all set! You'll see a small Zotero button at the bottom of your Firefox window.

If you have any problems, check the Zotero installation page.

You'll probably also want to download and install the Microsoft Word citation plugin (or the OpenOffice plugin if you're using OpenOffice). These allow you to easily cite items from your Zotero library in your papers.

Zotero can't automatically capture citation info from some web pages, but you can still add them to your Zotero library.

Click the Zotero button at the bottom of your browser to access Zotero's controls. Click either the chain link button to save a link to the page, or the camera button to save a "snapshot." A snapshot is a copy of the page saved to your local computer. It includes the page's text and images, so if the page is removed later you'll still be able to refer to it.

Click the Zotero button at the bottom of your browser to open your library. At the top left is a folder button with a green plus sign. Click this to create a new "collection."

Create collections to organize your references. Collections are like file folders on your computer, but a reference can be in more than one collection at a time. In other words, a book on the Civil War could be filed in your "Civil War" collection, your "Georgia History" collection and your "19th Century America" collection without having to make three copies of the reference.

Find it @Emory and Zotero

You've probably seen the Find it @Emory button in some article databases that allows you to locate the full text of an article online. Zotero allows you to use the same feature.

To set up Zotero to access the Find it @Emory server, click the gear button on the Zotero toolbar and choose Preferences. At the bottom of the preferences window, paste this url into the "Resolver" box:

Then click OK. Once you've set this up, you can click the Locate button on any citation you're viewing to search for the item online.

It's easy to create a bibliography from your Zotero library.

Select the references or collections you want to include. Hold the control key and click to select multiple items. Right-click one of the selected items and choose Create Bibliography. Choose the bibliographic style you want, and select the output format: Save as RTF or HTML, copy to clipboard or print. (The RTF file format is compatible with all word processors.)

Or you can just drag and drop references from Zotero into your document! They'll turn into fully formatted citations. This works with any word processor including Google Documents.

Zotero offers word processing plugins for Word and OpenOffice. The plugin adds a Zotero toolbar to your word processor that allows you to add citations to your document while you write.

To add a citation, click the first button ("Insert Citation") on the toolbar. Select the reference you want to cite and click OK. Zotero will add the citation at your cursor.

At the end of your paper, click the third button ("Insert Bibliography"). Your bibliography will appear, and new citations will be added automatically. Change bibliographic styles with the last button on the toolbar ("Set Doc Prefs").

Zotero is a great piece of software, but there are a few things that EndNote does better (so far). Fortunately, it's easy to use the two of them together and take advantage of the best features of each, or to share Zotero libraries with colleagues using EndNote or vice versa.

At this writing, Zotero can create bibliographies in 20 different citation styles. EndNote version X1 includes over 2900. Zotero also lacks EndNote's capacity to edit existing styles and create custom ones. If you're writing in a style Zotero doesn't support, you may want to use Zotero as your citation collector and export your library to EndNote when you're ready to write. Both programs can read and write a standard citation file format called RIS, which means references can be converted back and forth with a few clicks.

To save your Zotero library for importing into EndNote, click the Zotero button that looks like a gear and choose "Export Library." Choose RIS as the file type and pick a filename.

In EndNote, click "File" and then "Import." Click the "Choose File" button and select the file you just exported from Zotero. Set Import Option to "Reference Manager (RIS)" and click Import.

To export your EndNote library for use in Zotero, click "File" and then "Export." Set the output style to "RefMan (RIS) Export" and save it as a text file.

In Zotero, click the button that looks like a gear and choose "Import." Just double-click the file you exported from EndNote. The new references will be added to a collection named "Imported" followed by the date and time.