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Zotero: PDF Citation Information Search

Video link: https://youtu.be/6XuutIJpOko

Begin transcript

Visual: Zotero library dashboard
Narration: This is a short video that will show you how to add a PDF that you've already saved on your computer to your Zotero library. You have two options to do this.

Visual: Cursor moves to toolbar and clicks on plus sign icon
Narration: You can go up to the toolbar on the top of your ZOtero library and click on the green plus sign.

Visual: Dialog box opens with choices
Narration: From here you can choose Store Copy of File. That will open another little box where you can choose the place you've got the PDF stored on your computer, and tell it to save it into Zotero.

Visual: Cursor drags PDF from desktop into middle column of Zotero dashboard
Narration: You can also just drag and drop the PDF into your Zotero library.

Visual: cursor moves to right pane in Zotero dashboard
Narration: Once you've got it in there, you'll notice that on the right side, where we usually have citation information, there's just a file name. This is because it's come in as a PDF and not through the databases.

Visual: Middle pane of Zotero dashboard, right clicking on PDF, with popup dialog box open
Narrration: So to have Zotero search to see if it can find that citation information, you right click on the PDF. You go down to Retrieve Metadata for PDF. Metadata is just another word that's used for citation information.

Visual: Cursor clicking on Retrieve Metadata for PDF, with popup box showing search for citation information
Narration: Once you click on that, it will go ahead and search for the information. If you've not used this feature before you may get a little box that comes up that tells you you need to connect the PDF Indexing tool. So you should go ahead and follow the steps for that.

Visual: Column on the right in Zotero dashboard, cursor moving between different aspects of citation information
Narration: And here you see that Zotero was able to search using Google Scholar and find citation information for our PDF.

Created March 2016 by Walden University Library