How to Use Zotero

Bite-size search strategies to help you become an expert searcher.

This guide covers Zotero 6. Zotero 7, released in August 2024, has most of the same features; however, it also has a new interface and some new features. We will update this guide for Zotero 7 when we can. In the meantime, if you have questions, please email the University of Ottawa Library at bibliolibrary@uOttawa.ca.

Version française de ce cours: Comment utiliser Zotero

Instructions

Welcome to the University of Ottawa Library Zotero online course. This course is about Zotero (https://www.zotero.org/), a free citation manager that helps you collect, organize, and cite journal articles and other information sources. This course explains how to install and use the main features of Zotero. Use this course in whatever way works for you. Complete the whole course or complete only the parts you have questions about. Watch the videos, or read the transcripts, or download the instruction files and learn Zotero by trying it out yourself.

Requirements

  • To install Zotero, you need a computer with a recent version of Windows, MacOS, or Linux
  • To install the browser connector, which lets you add information sources from your browser to Zotero, you need a recent version of Firefox, Edge, Chrome, or Safari
  • To install the word processor plug-in, which helps you add citations and bibliographies to your research papers, you need a recent version of Word, Google Docs, or LibreOffice

For more detail, see the Zotero system requirements page.

Complete Instructions and Supporting Documents

All of the instructions and supporting documents from this course are available for download:

If you have questions, or if you run into problems that the course does not address, e-mail the University of Ottawa Library at bibliolibrary@uOttawa.ca.

CC BY-NC-SA 4.0

This online course is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International license. Unless otherwise stated, it is attributed to Mish Boutet, and is based on handouts by Patrick Labelle (also under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0).

[How to Use Zotero online course updated: November 8, 2022]