The three panes of your Zotero library work together to help you organize your collections.  The left pane shows your collections.  Notice that the “My Library” collection contains items from all your collections, like a back-up collection of all your items.  The bottom of the left pane displays you tags from the different items in your collection. The initial tags were automatically imported with the sources you saved to your library.

The middle pane shows the items within the collection you selected on the left pane. You can add different fields, such as creator and date modified, by right clicking anywhere in the field headings. Click the field headings to sort your sources by these fields to more easily find sources or determine patterns in your sources.

There are eight options in the right-hand pane for adding information to an individual source.  The first info tab option displays the information you need to cite this item in a bibliography.  Learn how to make adjustments to these fields by clicking on any of them.

The abstracts option takes you to the abstract (if available).

The attachments option shows any attachments, such as PDFs or screenshots, for this source.

The notes option shows any notes you have added to this source. You can also add more notes - see this page for more information about creating notes.

The Libraries and Collections option shows you what libraries this source belongs to. A source can be added to more than one collection or library.

To add a source to another library or collection, first choose the plus icon, then select the library or collection you would like to copy the source to.

The tags option allows you to view existing tags or to add more tags (using the plus icon) such as "must read" that can help you search for and organize the items in your collections.

The related option lets you link papers from another collection that have a relationship to your initial source.

The locate option lets you find the full-text for sources that don't already have the full-text available in your Zotero library. 

If you are an Oregon State University employee or student, use the library option to look for sources that require subscription access.

Access OSU Libraries resource by entering our library's OpenURL resolver. Go to the Edit menu, select Settings, then within the General tab, scroll to the Locate section. Paste in this URL:

http://alliance-primo.hosted.exlibrisgroup.com/openurl/OSU/