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Citing Sources

A citation is a reference to a published source, a way of acknowledging you found this information published somewhere, by someone.

Lena Marvin

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Helena Marvin
she/her & e/em
Contact:
UMSL TJ Library
x5084

Librarian

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Libby Wheeles
she/her
Contact:
Thomas Jefferson Library
University of Missouri - St. Louis
(314) 516-7281

Upcoming Zotero Workshop

Intro to Zotero

Intro to Zotero

Join the library for a virtual introduction to Zotero, a free citation management software. Learn how Zotero can help you organize your sources, pull information from the web, and generate automatic citations through Microsoft Word.

Please register on Triton Connect for the Zoom link!

Date:
Tuesday, September 19, 2023
Time:
2:00pm - 3:00pm
Time Zone:
Central Time - US & Canada 
 

What is Zotero?

 

 

 

Zotero is a free citation management software available for Windows, Mac, and Linux systems that helps you collect, organize, cite and share research sources.

Zotero can detect what type of resource you are viewing online, including articles, books, and webpages. You can then use it to find and save the full reference information. 

Strengths

  • Web version and desktop application allows you to cite and store citations anywhere. 
  • Web browser plugins for grabbing citations from the web. 
  • Web plugins auto detect what type of source you are looking at. 
  • Can take screenshots of websites to save citation information.
  • Open sourced software which is always being improved.
  • Can extracts citations from PDFs.
  • Can be used to annotate and view PDFs.
  • Active forum boards for help.
  • Desktop application uses computer storage which allows the user to determine how much data they would like to store.
  • User-friendly design.
  • Repository of citation style formats required by various associations and journals free to download and easy to install.

Weaknesses

  • Extracts citation information which may not be relevant.  
    • ex. email addresses, university affiliations.
  • Grabs database tags which can result in messy organization.
  • As of February 2022, web storage is limited to 300 MB - Paid options allow you to increase these limits. 

For more information, please see links below!

Getting started with Zotero