Your Zotero library

Everything that you add to your Zotero library will be found in your home collection ‘My Library’. There are 2 main tools to organise your Zotero library: Collections and Tags.

Collections

What and where are they?

• Found on the left hand side column of your library display with a folder icon
• Collections organise items in your Zotero library by grouping items by topic or any way that fits your research, with the option for sub-collections if needed
• Items are always listed in the ‘My Library’ home collection but can be added to as many collections/sub-collections as needed (just drag the item into the collection you would like to add it to). Any changes made to an item (to notes and attachments etc.) will be reflected in all locations within your library
• By default, you will only see the items in the collection or sub-collection selected, to change this, click on 'View' in the Zotero toolbar then select 'Show Items from Sub-collections'. This will now show you all items in your collection and the sub-collections contained within it

How to create them

• To create a collection, click on the yellow folder with the green plus icon, underneath the Zotero toolbar
• To create a sub-collection, select the collection you wish to add a subfolder to, then right click and select ‘New Subfolder’

Deleting individual items - right click/control-click on the item 

• 'Remove item from collection' - this will delete the item from the current collection but will keep it in your Zotero library (and any other collections it has been saved to)
• 'Move item to trash' - this will delete the item from all collections and from your Zotero library completely

Deleting collections -  right click/control-click on the collection

• 'Delete collection' - this will delete the collection only and will keep the items in your Zotero library 
• 'Delete collection & items' - this will delete the collection and all the items your Zotero library completely

Don't delete duplicated items, use the 'Merge' function instead (see the guidance on managing duplicates)

Top Tip

When adding an item using the browser connector, the item will automatically be saved into the last collection that you had open in Zotero. You can change this by clicking on the down arrow within the dialogue box to show all your collections, then select the location you need.

Tags

What and where are they?

• Tags are searchable keywords that are applied to individual items. They can be used as status tags such as ‘read’ or ‘to read’ etc. or you can add subject keyword tags. Please note that any changes made to a tag will apply to all items using that tag and deleting a tag will remove it from all items (the items themselves will not be deleted from your Zotero library) 
• Tags are searchable through the Zotero search box and browsable through the tag pane in the bottom left corner of your Zotero window. The tag pane will only show the tags attached to items in the collection selected. To browse your whole Zotero library you need to make sure that you select the 'My Library' collection 

How to create them

• Select the 'Tags' tab in the item detail pane on the right then click on 'Add'

Top Tip

If you are using tags to organise your library, it is recommended that you uncheck 'Automatically tag items with keywords and subject headings'. This is so you can remove Zotero-generated tags and instead create your own tags to suit your needs (navigate to the General tab in the Zotero preferences)

Further information on how to use tags can be found on the Zotero support pages: Collections and Tags

Default fields

Items in your Zotero library are sorted by various fields and arranged in columns (default fields are: Title, Creator and Attachments). 

Adding new fields

Additional fields can be added by right-clicking on a column header and then selecting the required field from the drop-down menu.

Changing the display order 

Clicking on a column header will sort your items by that field, e.g. clicking on Title will sort your items alphabetically by title.

Clicking on the same column header again will change the ascending and descending order.

Zotero Merge Function

Zotero can help you identify possible duplicates and then merge them. Don't delete duplicated items, instead use the 'Merge' function so that:

• Zotero can retain all of the collections and tags associated with the items (deleting items will result in losing this data) 
• Citations and bibliographies are not affected as merges are also automatically recognized by the word processor plugins

Finding duplicates

Click on the 'Duplicate Items' collection in the left hand pane (after all your named collections).
Zotero will show all detected duplicates in the centre pane (Zotero currently uses the the title, DOI, and ISBN fields to determine duplicates).

Matches need to be checked as there may be non-duplicates included. It is not currently possible to mark false positive matches as non-duplicates therefore these items will appear as duplicates each time you click on the 'Duplicate Items' collection.

Merging duplicates

• Click on the 'Duplicate Items' collection in the left hand pane to bring up the duplicate matches 
• Select an item in the centre pane then Zotero will automatically select the other items that it thinks are duplicates
• Click the “Merge Items” button in the right pane to merge the items
• If the item fields don't match completely, you can select one item to be the “master” from the list at the top of the right pane
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• then see the alternative versions of mismatched fields using the icons to the right of each field
  
  
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Top Tip

Sorting items by 'Title' can make it easier to view items