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Zotero: a free, open-source reference management program
Wednesday 13th October
Rosemary Rodd rr25@cam.ac.uk
LL-support@ucs.cam.ac.uk
HELP-DESK@UCS.CAM.AC.UK
Welcome
University Computing Service

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Health and Safety

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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
 Follow-on courses:
Word 2007: Mastering Dissertations and Theses (Level 3)
Web Skills for Researchers: Web of Knowledge
Web Skills for Researchers: Why Not to Google

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 Sign in: Pink Attendance Sheet
 Please fill in Green Review Form at the end of the course
 Let us know if you need assistance: Please ask questions
General Information

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What is Zotero?
A database program specifically designed to store and manipulate
references.
Unlike many similar programs, it is an add-on for a web-browser, rather
than a stand-alone package.
References may be used to document any kind of information source. For
example:
Print material: books, journal articles...
Audiovisual: TV, radio, film, podcast...
Music: CD, MPG...
Images: paintings, drawings, photos...
Web pages

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Why is it important to document your
sources?
 Avoid the appearance of plagiarism.
 Enable other people to refer back to them if they want to check
your conclusions.
 For your own benefit, so you can go back and re-read or check
them, and so that you can keep track of where your ideas came
from.
 But not intended as a straitjacket: there might be good reasons
(for example) why you might need to anonymise informants who
could be put at risk by having their details published in references
to personal communications.

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Why use software to do this?
 Human beings are good at overall analysis and getting "the big
picture"
 Human beings are very bad at applying fiddly layout and
punctuation rules consistently.
 Computers are mindless, but they will be absolutely consistent if
you set them up with suitable rules.
 By using a bibliography management program you can produce
neat, consistent references without lots of correcting and retyping.

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Other benefits
 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.

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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!

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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/