Literature management with Zotero

1. Literature management with Zotero By Praveen Vaidya

3. Preview • Managing the literature • What is Zotero? And its features • Application of Zotero in literature management • Limitations of Zotero • Conclusion

5. Managing the literature • During the research process, bound to gather a mound of literature • May include reference materials, books, journals, grey literature, official publications etc. • Needs efficient reading skills to allow you to cull unwanted literature • You have to find a way to manage or organise • Should be able to annotate, cite and understand relevancy • Should be able to retrieve quickly and efficiently

8. What is Zotero? [zoh-TAIR-oh] • A research tool for managing online references by George Mason University, Virginia • A Firefox extension that provides users with automated access to bibliographic information for resources viewed online. • Can be downloaded from website ‘Stand alone’ version 3 http://www.zotero.org/support/3.0 • Add on can be downloaded from Firefox browser • When installed, icon appears on side bar • “Senses” the bibliographic information contained in a website

9. What is Zotero? 2 • When the user clicks the Zotero icon-gathers that information and places it on the user’s library of resources • Helps to gather the information quickly and easily • Later researcher can review and cite sources • Has a feature of adding records manually also • Hence, researcher has a centralized location of gathering and storing references • This, streamlines the research process • At this stage, Zotero can sense information of many of prominent websites

10. What is Zotero? 3 • Provision to create subject folders sub folders and tags • Search feature from any of the key words found in the saved literature • Can take a snap shot of the website referred • Suppose, if website is not compatible with Zotero, data can be entered manually • Organises resources on timeline • Users can choose citation format, such as APA, Chicago, MLA etc • Can export citations to MS Word or Google docs

20. Limitation of Zotero • Does not work with Internet Explorer as IE is proprietary nature of the browser, but can install ‘standalone’ on Windows OS • Tied to only specific computer you are using. To use it on other computer, installation of browser and Zotero add on is essential • Online access to information is made available in new versions of Zotero, but if you want to switch to another computer, user has to export-import the data • Does not provide an easy method to share the information with others

21. Conclusion • Today, quantity of online data has skyrocketed and research takes place at ever increasing pace • By automating the tasks of gathering, managing, citing online references, Zotero or other online reference tools facilitate more efficient research process • Formatting of citation is consistent, and typos and other mistakes common in manual reference system can be eliminated • By and large, literature management affords to be systematic

22. References • O’Leary, Zina (2010) The essential guide to doing your research project. Sage, New Delhi pp71-83 • Busha, Charles and Harter, Stephen, P (1980) Research methods in librarianship. California, Academic Press • http://www.rin.ac.uk/our-work/communicating-and-disseminating-research/social-media-guide-researchers • http://www.zotero.org/support/quick_start_guide

23. Thanks Questions?