Library Guides: Zotero: Getting Citations into Zotero

Adding references to your Zotero library

There are a number of ways to add items to your Zotero:

Automatically capture bibliographic information
Use book, item and folder icons displayed in the location bar at the top of your Firefox window. Use this when you can but it is not available for every source.
Add item by identifier
Use ISBN, DOI or PMID
Archive web pages
Open Zotero and use "Create new item from current page" icon
Import records from other reference management software, such as RefWorks
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Exporting citations from Refworks to Zotero from NCSU Libraries
Manually add items
Open Zotero and use green + icon
PDFs
Zotero can take PDFs of scholarly papers and query the Google Scholar database for matches. Drag and drop a PDF into Zotero and right click on the PDF and Retrieve Metadata from PDFs.
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While this feature can greatly facilitate importing large existing libraries of PDFs, the imported data, especially where Zotero uses Google Scholar, is of lower quality than importing via Web Translator from most scholarly databases.
Store other files, such as images, documents or spreadsheets
Drag and drop

Importing from online databases

Many of our databases work very well with Zotero. Automatic capture is NOT available everywhere so be prepared to copy and paste or type in items from time to time.

Zotero compatible sites

Some issues to watch for when adding items from databases:

Complete author names if you get only initials
Volume/issue information appears in correct fields
Correct page ranges appear
Keywords or descriptors transfer appropriately into tags.

Importing from online databases: Catalogs

Straightforward, automatic capture:

Carroline, WorldCat (both versions), OhioLink, JSTOR, EBSCO, Google Books, Google Scholar, Amazon

Use item identifiers, archive web page, or manual addition techniques:

Zotero frequently adds new "site translators" so watch for icons in the location bar. They may appear one day.

Zotero compatible sites

Some issues to watch out for when adding items from catalogs:

Did all the authors, editors, translators, etc. come through as the appropriate role?
If you will be using the call numbers in the future, did the full call number come through, or did it truncate? Did the location come through as well?
Check how Zotero transferred subject headings or keywords into tags.
Colons in titles require the extra space before the colon to be removed.
Test with bibliography creation in your favorite formats before you save too many citation.