This guide was adapted from the Zotero guide created by Jason Puckett at the University Library of Georgia State University and adapted under the terms of a Creative Commons License.
What Zotero Does
Zotero is an application that collects, manages, and cites research sources. It's easy to use and connects with your web browser to download citation information from books, journal articles, web pages, and other sources. Best of all it's free.
Zotero allows you to attach PDFs, notes and images to your citations, organize them into collections for different projects, and create bibliographies. Below is an image of the homepage of a Zotero library.
ZoteroBib
ZoteroBib is a free, fast citation generator that is similar to (but in our experience, more accurate and reliable than) tools such as EasyBib and NoodleTools.
Go to ZBib.org. In the "Cite" bar, enter either the URL for a web source, the ISBN of a book, the DOI or PMID number of an article, or the title of a source. (Numbers sometimes work better than titles.) If none of those work, you can click Manual Entry and fill in the blanks.
Your bibliography appears on the page as you add sources. Use the blue bar to choose your citation style.
While this tool provides quick assistance when creating citations it does not have the same functionality of the Zotero application. You can not save files, organize your citations or share them with others. Below is an example of a ZoteroBib Citation.