Managing Reference Data with Zotero: About Zotero & Zotero Workshop

  is, at the most basic level, a free and easy-to-use reference manager. It is designed to store, manage, and cite bibliographic references, such as books and journal articles. More broadly, Zotero is a powerful tool for collecting, organizing, and sharing research information and sources.

Zotero 6 that was released in March 2022 has become an all-in-one research app for many Zotero users. Its new built-in PDF reader lets you mark up PDFs with highlights, notes, and image annotations. The upgraded note editor lets you cite other items directly in notes and insert notes into your Word with active Zotero citations. 

• Collect - Zotero automatically senses research as you browse the web.  With a single click of the Zotero save button, it can capture all the citation information for an item such as a book or journal article, and download a full-text PDF if available. You can also add notes, files, and links to items. 
• Organize - Use Collections and Tags to organize Zotero library the way you want it.
• Cite - To insert citations in Word, with Zotero's toolbar, either use the red dialogue box by searching Zotero library or the classic view by browsing Zotero library.
• Sync - keep your data up to date across devices.
• Share - Zotero's group feature enables you to share your research easily with others. 
• Annotate - With Zotero's built-in PDF reader, you can annotate PDF files and generate notes from your annotations.
• Take notes - Take notes with the note editor. Notes can be PDF annotations, your summaries of readings, and your new ideas and thoughts. 
• Draft/Outline - When a standalone note is opened in a separate window, you can drag items, notes, PDF annotations, and non-annotation PDF text and drop them to the note. This makes it possible to draft or outline your writing. 

• Contact Jane Zhao if your class or group would like to request a session. 
• Stay tuned for upcoming Zotero workshops for Managing Your Citations with Zotero and Reading, Annotating, Note-taking, and Drafting/Outlining with Zotero 6. 
• Zotero 6 workshop handout

• Follow Zotero on Twitter
• For the latest update, read the Zotero blog
• Zotero documentation 
• Zotero: a guide for librarians, researchers and educators / by Jason Puckett. 

Zotero was created at the Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media at George Mason University in 2006. 

It is now a project of the Corporation for Digital Scholarship, a nonprofit organization dedicated to the development of software and services for researchers and cultural heritage institutions. To learn more about the people that have made Zotero possible, see Zotero Credits and Acknowledgements.

Zotero was an extension for the Firefox web browser (released in 2006) or a standalone application (released in 2011). Starting with the release of Zotero 5.0 in July 2017, Zotero for Firefox and Zotero Standalone have been replaced by a single standalone application for users of all browsers.  Zotero standalone connectors are available for Firefox, Google Chrome, Safari, and Microsoft Edge that allow users to save items to Zotero directly from within the web browser.

Zotero 6 was released in March 2022 with a built-in PDF reader and a new note editor.

Zotero 7 was released in August 2024 with a fresh modern interface and improved performance.