Zotero and How It Works: Creating Bibliographies

This guide has been prepared to offer help with Zotero, an open access bibliographic management tool. URL: https://libguides.cmich.edu/Zotero

Creating Bibliographies

It very easy to create a bibliography or a citation list in Zotero.

In the sections below, you will see three ways to do so:       

  • Grouping Without a Pre-Created Collection                                                        
  • Grouping Within a Pre-Created Collection           
  • Grouping Using User Generated Tags

Method 1: Grouping Without a Pre-Created Collection

1. Highlight the citations you want to include in your bibliography in the Zotero Center column by pressing the shift key. 

2. Right click the highlighted list of sources.                                                                                                                           

3. Select a function named "Create Bibliography from Selected Items."                                                                                

4. Select your citation style, for example, "Modern Language Association," "Chicago Manual of Style,"American Medical Association," or "American Psychological Association."     

5. Choose the Output Method, Save as RTF.                                                                                       

6. Save in a file folder of your choice.                                                                                                                                     

7. Open it with any word processing program--your bibliography will be there. 

Method 2: Grouping Within a Pre-Created Collection

In addition to adding sources straight to the general Zotero page and then putting them in a collection from there, another option is to create a new collection ahead of time and then add resources to that newly created collection.

To do so:

1. Create a new collection in the Zotero window by clicking on the “new collection” file button at the top left corner of the window.  

2. Go to the page or source you are looking to add to your citation (this will be in your general browser). 

3. Click on the Zotero icon at the top right corner of your browser. 

4. Click on the drop-down menu next to “saving to” and select the newly created collection which you wish to add your source or sources to.  

5. Go to Zotero, right click on named collection folder in right hand corner of screen and select “Create Bibliography from Collection”. 

6.Select your citation style, for example, "Modern Language Association," "Chicago Manual of Style," "American Medical Association," or "American Psychological Association." 

7. Choose the Output Method, Save as RTF. 

8. Save it in a file folder of your choice. 

9. Open it with any word processing program -- your bibliography will be there!! 

Method 3: Grouping Using User Generated Tags

To conclude, one final way Zotero allows you to create a collection of resources to cite is through the usage of tags.  

To add tags to a set of items in Zotero and to use these tags to create a collection of records to be cited: 

1. Select a resource in the Zotero tab by left clicking on it.

2. Select the “tags” button off to the right side of the screen and click the “add” button located below it. Proceed to write out name of tag or tags.

3. Identify all the tags which fit into a particular category by either clicking on the name of the tag as located in the bottom left corner of the Zotero screen or by searching for all terms with a particular subject tag by going to the search bar at the top of the screen, selecting “All fields and tags”, and typing the tag into the search bar.

4. Right click and select “Create Bibliography for Items"

   OR

    Right click the highlighted list of sources and select add to collection, you will be given the option to create a new collection to add            these sources to or to create a new set.

5. If collection created, right click on named collection folder in right hand corner of screen and select “Create Bibliography from Collection”.  

6.Select your citation style, for example, "Modern Language Association," "Chicago Manual of Style," "American Medical Association," or "American Psychological Association." 

7. Choose the Output Method, Save as RTF. 

8. Save it in a file folder of your choice. 

9. Open it with any word processing program -- your bibliography will be there!! 

Additional Options Worth Noting

There are a few other technical options on top of the ones listed above which are useful for creating citation lists in Zotero:

1. Save as HTML will allow you to save the bibliography as a HTML file for viewing in a web browser. The format will also embed metadata allowing other Zotero users viewing the document to to capture bibliographic information. 

2. Save to Clipboard will allow you to save the bibliography to your clipboard to paste into any text field.

3. Print will send your bibliography straight to a printer. 

For more information, please visit http://www.zotero.org/support/creating_bibliographies.

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