By William & Mary Libraries Research Services
Say hello to our newest institutional access citation management tool available to William & Mary faculty, staff and students – Zotero! Zotero is an open access citation management tool – which means it has always been free to use, however, starting now, William & Mary Libraries is funding institutional access to Zotero’s cloud storage. That means any Zotero user who has a W&M email address associated with their account has unlimited cloud storage to sync their Zotero libraries across devices and keep their records, notes, and PDFs up to date!
You might be wondering what a citation management tool is and why we love Zotero here at the libraries. A citation management tool helps you gather all your research resources (books, journal articles, video clips, government documents, and more!) in one location and integrates into Word and Google Docs to create in-text citations and bibliographies using your preferred citation style. To use this tool, you’ll need to download a Zotero desktop application (we call this the Zotero Library) and a browser connector, which will help you gather all those resources into the library. Information about how to do that is available at:
- Printable Setup Guide
- Zotero Quick Introduction (<2 minutes: how to generate a bibliography with Zotero)
- Using Zotero for Academic Writing (a 7 minute video taking you through ALL the basics)
New to Zotero? To take advantage of W&M’s institutional access and unlimited storage simply create a Zotero account using your W&M email address. To do so, go to Zotero.org and select “Log In” and “Register for a New Account”. Once you’ve established your account online, be sure to setup file syncing in your Zotero desktop library.
Already have a Zotero account? You can still benefit! All you need to do is log into your Zotero cloud account and change your primary email address to your W&M email account. To do so, follow these steps:
- Go to Zotero.org and log in with your current email address and password.
- Go to “Settings” and “Manage Email Addresses”.
- Add your W&M email address as a secondary email address and click save.
- Set your W&M email address as the primary address for your account.
Once you’ve made these changes, make sure you go into your Zotero desktop library, open preferences, and update your email address and password under “Sync.”
Need help or have questions? Reach out to the W&M Libraries’ Research Department at sweref@wm.edu!