Managing your Zotero library effectively

Is your Zotero library growing wild?

If you’re looking at this unit of the course, you may be in a place where you’ve got the basics of Zotero down — how to add or import items, how to use the Zotero Connectors to add items from a web browser, and how to use Zotero to generate citations and bibliographies in Microsoft Word — but you’re wondering what else you can do with the software. If your collection of citations has begun to grow beyond 30 to 50 items, it may start to feel a little disorganized.  So how do Zotero’s built-in organizational features work together to create a coherent system for taming and managing all your research content and course materials?

That’s what this unit is all about. In it, we take an in-depth look at the three main systems Zotero uses to organize content: collections, tags, and related items. After modules that look at each of these features in detail, we show you an add-on for Zotero, called Zutilo, that can be used to make an easier time of managing items in bulk (copying and pasting tags, editing item information, adding new keyboard shortcuts, and more). Here’s what you’ll find in this unit:

• An introduction to collections, tags, and related items
• In-depth modules that cover all the ways you can use:
  • collections
  • tags
  • related items
• Instructions for using Zutilo to make tagging and item data much easier to manage in bulk

We recommend going through the modules in order, so why not start with the introduction to collections, tags, and related items?