Skip to Main Content

HIST 066: Disease, Culture, and Society in the Modern World: Comparative Perspectives (SC): Get Organized

History 066: Disease, Culture, and Society in the Modern World (Armus) Fall 2012

Get Organized: Creating Your Research Library

Journal articles, books, primary source documents, citations - it's a lot to keep track of.

By using a citation management program like Zotero, you can create a personal research library that stores all of your citations in one place. This practice will make referring to sources and writing your bibliography much easier.

 

 

 

 

Introduction

What are citation-management tools and why should I use one?

Citation-management tools allow one to:
  • Automatically create citations formatted in a number of standard citation syles: APA, MLA, Chicago, and so on
  • Save citations for use in current and/or future assignments and other projects
  • Organize citations into folders in order to customize bibliographies by topic or project
  • Add notes and additional metadata to citations
  • Share citations with others
  • Store citations online and gain access to them from multiple devices or locations

What is Zotero?

  • Zotero is a free citation-management extension for Firefox (also available as a standalone program).
  • Zotero allows one to gather, organize, analyze, and re-use:
    • Citations
    • Full-text documents (PDFs, snapshots)
    • Web pages
    • Images
    • Other objects (e.g., dictionary entries, book chapters)
  • Zotero also allows one to share these citations and files through the use of "groups" on its website.  Groups can be either private or public.  Users can also search existing public groups for citations and other information on topics that interest them.  For more information, see: http://www.zotero.org/support/groups.

Organizing Your Notes

You can store notes in Zotero as well as citations and PDFs.  Just add the Word documents, text documents, or other files to your Zotero library.

Need Help?

Bryn Mawr
library@brynmawr.edu
(610) 526-5276

Haverford
library@haverford.edu
(610) 896-1175

Swarthmore
librarian@swarthmore.edu
(610) 328-8493