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Mat-Su College: Zotero, a free citation manager

An introduction to Zotero, a free, open source citation manager.

Generating a bibliography

Whether you call it a bibliography, a works cited page, or something else, Zotero can quickly and easily generate a list of sources to put at the end of your paper. (It can also do footnotes and in-text citations.)

Zotero can automatically cite sources in APA style, MLA style, or any one of thousands of other styles!

Desktop version: create bibliography

  1. In the middle pane of Zotero, select all the references you want in your bibliography. (Hold down control while clicking to select multiple references.) Right click and choose the menu item "Create Bibliography from Items":Zotero items selected from the middle pane of the Zotero client. The menu that appears after a right click is displayed, with the "Create Bbiliography from Items" menu item highlighted.
  2. In the Create Citation/Bibliography pop-up window, choose the Citation Style you want, choose the "Bibliography" Output Mode, and choose "Copy to Clipboard" for the Output Method:
    The "Create Citation/Bibliography" window, with the APA 6th Edition citation style highlighted, the Bibliography output mode radio button selected, and the Copy to Clipboard output method selected.
  3. Now, as soon as you copy and paste into your document, you will have a nicely formatted list of sources:Microsoft Word with the copy-and-pasted list of references from the two previous steps.

Web version: create bibliography

  1. In the middle pane of Zotero, select all the references you want in your bibliography. (Hold down control while clicking to select multiple references.)
  2. Click the "create bibliography" icon (see screenshot):
    "Create bibliography" button in Zotero web interface
  3. Choose a citation style, then click "Copy to clipboard." Paste this into your paper.