This document provides information about an introductory training course on Zotero, a free reference management program. The course will cover how to add references to a Zotero database from online sources, organize references with notes and PDFs, and insert citations into documents. It is scheduled for Friday June 8th from 14:15-16:15 and will be led by Rosemary Rodd. Attendees should sign in on the provided sheet and fill out an online feedback form after. Related follow up courses on dissertation writing and literature searching are also mentioned.

1. Zotero
A free, open-source reference management program
Friday 8th June 14:15 – 16:15
Rosemary Rodd rr25@cam.ac.uk
LL-support@ucs.cam.ac.uk
SERVICE-DESK@UCS.CAM.AC.UK

2. Health and Safety

3. General Information

Sign in: Pink Attendance Sheet
Please fill in the online feedback at the end of the course
Start->All Programs->Popular Applications->Course Feedback/
Course files can be downloaded from:
www.ucs.cam.ac.uk/support/courses/files

Let us know if you need assistance: Please ask
questions

4. Follow-on courses:
Word 2007: Mastering Dissertations and Theses (Level 3)
Web Skills for Researchers: Web of Knowledge and Scopus
Courses run by University Library
Referencing Without Tears, How To Do A Literature Search,
How To Find Things on Your Reading List
Newspaper Research

5.  Zotero is a helper program: store references and insert in your word
processor document.
 Zotero can help you to search for references online.
 Store references with your own notes, downloaded PDFs, images etc.
 References are searchable, and you can add your own keywords.
 References can be instantly re-formatted (e.g. to change from a
numbered layout to Author-Date)

6. Editing Zotero Output Styles
Zotero output styles are written in the XML based Citation Style
Language—unfortunately there is no GUI editor.
This means it is possible to edit styles if you cannot find one that fits your
requirements, but it is not easy
If none of the inbuilt styles does what you want, check the online style
repository at http://www.zotero.org/styles
Even if none of them does precisely what you want it will generally be very
much easier to modify an existing style which is almost right than to
create an entirely new one from scratch.
The next slide shows the beginning of a style definition written in CSL…

7. ?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<?oxygen
RNGSchema="http://xbiblio.svn.sourceforge.net/viewvc/*checkout*/xbiblio/csl/schema/tru
nk/
csl.rnc" type="compact"?>
<style xmlns="http://purl.org/net/xbiblio/csl" class="in-text" xml:lang="en">
<info>
….
</info>
<macro name="title">
<choose>
<if type="book">
<text variable="title" font-style="italic"/>
</if>
<else>
<text variable="title"/>
</else>
</choose>
…

8. Some online tutorials on editing CSL Styles
http://www.condast.com/zotero/index.html
http://www.zotero.org/support/csl_simple_edits
http://citationstyles.org/downloads/primer.html
(This last tutorial refers to CSL 1.0 which is not yet supported by Zotero).

9. Some online tutorials on editing CSL Styles
http://www.condast.com/zotero/index.html
http://www.zotero.org/support/csl_simple_edits
http://citationstyles.org/downloads/primer.html
(This last tutorial refers to CSL 1.0 which is not yet supported by Zotero).

10. Check with your supervisor!
If your discipline requires very complicated rules for reference
layout it may be tricky (occasionally impossible) to find a style in
Zotero which will satisfy the requirements.
ALWAYS produce a small sample and show it to your supervisor,
publisher etc. for approval before doing a large amount of work.
Your supervisor is also the right person to ask for advice about
discipline-related protocols such as anonymisation of any personal
data you have collected.
Don't leave all this until the week before you are due to submit your
work!

11. This course covers
 Getting references into Zotero.
 Adding extra content to your database (e.g. full text PDFs).
 Using Zotero to insert formatted references into documents.
It doesn’t discuss selecting suitable online databases of references in
any depth.
If you are doubtful about where to start I would strongly recommend
attending the two Webskills for Researchers courses and also visiting the
University Library’s eresources page
www.lib.cam.ac.uk/electronicresources/

12. General Information
 Objectives: learn to use the software to capture and format references
 Pre-requisites: use of a web browser
 Duration & Break: 2 hours - feel free to go out when you need to, but
no food/drink in the teaching room, please.
 Course Material: workbook
 Delivery Style: self-paced: please ask questions!