How to add a bibliography item with Zotero

Contents

Get Zotero

If you don’t have a Zotero account, create one here.
Go to https://www.zotero.org/groups/2336801 and request an invitation to the Manuscript Hunters group (or let us know your username so that we can add you). Once you’ve been invited, you must still accept the invitation by email or on the Zotero website.
Download the Zotero app for your device and install it.
In the app preferences/settings > Sync (not the Zotero website), sign into the account you created.

It may take a few minutes to synchronize, but after that you should see „Manuscript Hunters“ in your „Group Libraries“ in the left pane (if you have already accepted the invitation).

Save bibliography items from web pages to the Zotero group

One of the best parts about Zotero is that you can add items to your bibliography from many of the website where you search for those items, such as WorldCat and Google Scholar. To do this, you need the Zotero Connector, a plugin for your web browser (Firefox, Chrome, Safari, etc.).

Install the Zotero Connector (if you didn’t already do so when you installed the app). In Safari, you might have to also „allow extensions“ in Safari preferences.
Once installed, you should see a „Save to Zotero“ button in your browser toolbar. The icon’s appearance changes, depending on what kind of item you’re viewing. For example, try going to https://www.worldcat.org/title/656573759. There you should see a book icon like this.

If you click on the button, that item will be added to whatever library or folder you’ve selected in your Zotero app. Try it!

Edit the item in Zotero

If you click on the item in the list in your Zotero app, you’ll see details in the „Info“ tab. There you can edit it’s information. There’s a lot we could cover here, but the most important things to check when you save an item from a website are

Item Type
Title (including capitalization)
Author(s)
Language (this will affect the way the title is capitalized when you export the item)

For a more detailed guide, see https://libguides.massgeneral.org/zotero/editing-library.

Pro tip: If an item’s full text is available as a web page or PDF, you can add the link to the URL field. To allow people to comment on the text with Hypothes.is, you can add the text https://via.hypothes.is/ in front of the link, e.g., https://via.hypothes.is/https://archive.org/download/in.ernet.dli.2015.22956/2015.22956.Travels-In-Syria-And-Holy-Land_text.pdf.

Add the item to this WordPress site

We use the plugin Zotpress to automatically search, retrieve, and display bibliography references from Zotero on this site. The great part is you don’t have to add the bibliography item separately to WordPress or worry about the citation format.

Go the page you want to add the reference to and click „Edit.“

In the right sidebar, click on the „Seite“ or „Page“ tab, then go down to the Zotpress section.

In the searchbar, enter the author or title of the item you want to add. Wait a moment for the search results to pop up, then click on the one you want.

Select „In-Text,“ enter the number of the page you want to cite (if applicable), and click „Generate shortcode.“ Underneath the button, a code will appear, which you can copy and paste anywhere on your page.

For example, pasting the code

[zotpressInText item="{2336801:A4E8QXYR,100}"]

displays .