Zotero

A good reference manager can be an incredibly helpful tool in your research. There are 10 reasons you should seriously consider using Zotero.

Having text in your PDFs makes them searchable and easier to mark up. For any image-only PDFs you have, Zotero can extract and add this text.

Zotero comes with a little free storage, but you’ll soon need more. So, here are 4 ways to get the space you need as you expand your research.

To get a basic installation of Zotero up and running is incredibly straightforward.1 It’s also quite flexible and customizable. So, as you work with Zotero, you can tailor its behavior to how you work, including by adding and customizing extensions.2 If you use Zotero on multiple computers, you can easily synchronize your Zotero library among those machines. But the same isn’t the case for the rest of your Zotero profile—all your settings, styles, and extensions. So, any time you change your profile, you have to make that same change on each machine separately. ...

Zotero is an incredibly helpful research tool.1 But it’s only as useful as the information it contains. So, the more you improve what your Zotero library contains—whether by adding or correcting contents—the more useful the tool will become. There are multiple ways to add additional resources to Zotero. Several of them allow Zotero to automatically input information from various places. But if the information you import is itself incorrect or just doesn’t import properly, Zotero won’t be able to use that information as it should. So, especially when you automatically import resources into Zotero, it’s well worth proofreading briefly what you’ve imported. ...

Zotero has been undergoing a major overhaul.((Header image provided by Zotero via Twitter.)) In May 2023, Zotero announced the public beta for the popular research platform.((Dan Stillman, “Announcing the Zotero 7 Beta,” Zotero Forums, 20 May 2023.)) Since that time, the beta version for Zotero 7 has received scores of updates. ...

Citation managers like Zotero can simplify how you reference series. But what a citation manager puts out is only as good as what you put into it.

Zotero can do a lot of work, including giving your citations the proper case. With non-English sources, two features are especially helpful.

Dark mode isn’t magic. But if you find it helpful like I do, then you can enable it in Zotero in either of two ways.

SBL style has a specific way to cite individually paginated articles from electronic journals. But Zotero can handle those citations too.

Don’t edit Zotero citations to enter locators. Instead, let Zotero manage these locators, what goes around them, and any citation updates.

Zotero can help you keep your citations in order while also clearing your way to focus on the substance of your research and writing.

“Garbage in, garbage out” applies to Zotero just like any other software. But there’s an easy way to bulk edit items to tidy your database.

Right-to-left text like Hebrew can sometimes cause unexpected results in Zotero citations. But if so, it’s easy to straighten things out.

Sometimes, you work with sources that involve some extra complexity if you’re going to cite them properly.((Header image provided by Zotero via Twitter.)) Rather than making these changes one by one, however, Zotero allows you to make them automatically any time you cite a given source. That way, you only have to work out once how to cite a source once. After that, it’s saved in your library, and you can focus on how you want to discuss that source rather than on how you need to cite it. ...

Different languages and styles have different capitalization conventions. But Zotero can handle all these different requirements for you.

Zotero might or might not be a tool you want to recommend to your students. But it definitely could help simplify their work—and yours.

What ISBNs do for books DOIs do for all kinds of sources. And if you need DOIs in your citations, there are some simple ways to collect them.

You might think citing a grammar according to the “SBL Handbook of Style” would be straightforward. It is, but there are several special cases to account for.

SBL style prescribes different citation formats for encyclopedias, lexicons, and dictionaries. Zotero can handle these formats if you know how.

Zotero makes it very easy to edit notes beyond what a particular citation style allows. Unediting notes is also simple but less immediately clear.

Daily Gleanings about improved cross-compatibility among word processors in Zotero and about exporting information from PhraseExpress.

I’ve been grateful to be able to materially update two prior posts with additional content: Publication Year Ranges in Zotero: Previously, this post described how to get Zotero to produce the proper output when citing a series or multivolume work as a whole that was published over a range of years. The prior post version, however, was only able to address this for ranges of years that already had an end date. But with thanks to Brenton Wiernik on the Zotero forums, I’ve been able to update the post to describe how to get the output required if the year range doesn’t yet have an end. This is useful when citing series that are still being published (e.g., the Göttingen Septuagint). Get Strack and Billerbeck via Internet Archive: Previously, this post identified how to access on Internet Archive volumes 1–3 of Hermann Strack and Paul Billerbeck’s Kommentar zum Neuen Testament aus Talmud und Midrasch. But these volumes represent only half of Strack and Billerbeck’s commentary. Happily, Ronald van der Bergh mentioned that he had found another page on Internet Archive that provides a combined file of volumes 1–4. I’ve now included a link in the post to this additional file. If anyone comes across volume 5 or 6, do please leave a comment with where you found them, and I’ll be happy to update the post further.

With Zotero, it can be tricky to get proper citations when author names have “Jr.,” “III,” etc. Here’s how to ensure you get their names output correctly.

At present, Zotero’s “date” field doesn’t properly handle publications made over a range of years (e.g., 1950–1960).((Header image provided by Zotero via Twitter.)) Instead of including the full range in the corresponding note or bibliography entry, only the first year of the range would be presented (e.g., 1950). If the Range Has an End There is, however, a workaround that depends on entering the following syntax in an item’s “extra” field: issued: [first year]/[last year]. Thus, for example, if the extra field has issued: 1950/1960, Zotero would properly output a range of publication dates (thus: “1950–1960”). ...

The next major release of the Zotero bibliographic management system is now available. Zotero should update automatically for most users, but anyone wanting to go ahead and get the latest version can download it from Zotero’s site to install over a prior version. For discussion of what’s new in this version, see: ...

I’ve recently had a discussion over at the Zotero forums that brought to light a couple interesting points that I hadn’t been aware of: There’s currently in beta a major update to Zotero 5.0, which includes several important feature changes. The beta isn’t quite ready for prime time yet but should be “very soon.” Included in this update is the new Citation Style Language (CSL) processor that should remedy the comma and period placement issue in the forum thread. Frank Bennett has provided an updated CSL processor that can be installed in a current Zotero 4 version via the Propachi Vanilla plugin. For additional discussion of Zotero here, see this tag. ...

Microsoft Word ties footnote anchors in the main text and footnote numbers at the start of footnotes to the same style. Consequently, it’s difficult to get full-height footnote numbers followed by a period (cf. Chicago Manual of Style, SBL Handbook of style). The process for getting this result discussed at Word MVPs does not seem to work in Word v16. But Word’s InsertFootnoteNow function can be intercepted to add the following macro commands to produce this result: ...

On the web: Zotero 4.0.4 is now available with some minor improvements over the previous stable version. Joseph Kelly highlights some good advice about how not to write a thesis or dissertation. Logos Bible Software has added the Aramaic Bible series to their pre-publication program.

Image via CrunchBase I’ve just now noticed, but a stable release of Zotero 4 became available earlier this week. This release includes a substantial number of updates over previous versions. For highlights, see here, or peruse the whole change log. ...