Zotero [zoh-TAIR-oh] is a free, easy-to-use Firefox extension to help you collect, manage, cite, and share your research sources. It lives right where you do your work—in the web browser itself.

If you work with texts and citations, chances are Zotero can help you organize your research and take some of the aggravation out of collecting, sorting, and using references and citations. Zotero is a plugin for the Firefox browser and is free to use.

To download Zotero, start up the Firefox browser. (If you don't have Firefox installed, you can get it here.) go to http://www.zotero.org/ and click on the large download button. Once you've got it installed, take some time to explore the Zotero site. They have great information and training materials.

There are a lot of resources available at Zotero.org to help you learn Zotero. My advice is to install it and jump right in. Then, when you can't figure something out, check out Zotero's fantastic support documents and screencast tutorials (videos) to help you. Rather than drowning yourself in details right off the bat, I recommend playing around a little first and then become an expert at your own pace.

I'm happy to answer questions about Zotero, just email me at schiller@vancouver.wsu.edu or use the contact information on the right of the page.