Instructional Technology at McDaniel College

My last blog post, where I introduced Zotero, sparked very good feedback from a few of you, and in one case required me to do a bit of digging to sort out a solution. It seemed worthwhile to share the results of those exchanges with everyone. Here are a some tips based on the questions that came up.

The Missing Icon
For the most part, the Quick Start Guide is a great resource for getting started with Zotero. There is one section, however, that’s a little misleading. Reading through “When Zotero Senses Items on a Web Page” you see how Zotero uses site translators to sense items on a web page and that it uses that data to save all the pertinent citation information to your library. Just click the icon in the address bar at the top of the window and, regardless of whether Zotero is open, the data is saved.

Don’t see an icon in the address bar? Not all web pages are fully compatible with the available site translators and, therefore, won’t display such an icon. You can still add the page information to your library. You’ll just have to open Zotero and add the item yourself. Zotero still captures a good bit of data automatically but not necessarily all the pieces you want. Most library catalogs and sites like Amazon, BBC News and Google Books have compatible translators, with more added as they become available. Check Compatible Sites for a comprehensive list.

To learn more about adding pages that don’t have translators take a look at Archive the Web. In addition to a brief text tutorial illustrated with screenshots, you can access a couple of short video tutorials (partially captioned) that expand the topic a little more. Wait, there’s more. Also take a look at the Manually Creating Items video tutorial.

Those Nifty Tags
The ability to apply multiple tags to an item is one of Zotero’s most useful features. Tagging articles, web pages, pdfs and anything else you collect essentially creates built-in filters for instant saved searches. What’s that, you say? Here’s an example: I track a variety of technology-related web sites. (Go figure.) They range from “how-to” documents to “what’s new” pages to articles about the benefits/pitfalls of using “X” (and anything in between). An article on podcasting has tags including categories such as podcast, tutorial, pedagogy and copyright. A blog post on wikis has tags including wikis, technology and pedagogy. If I want to quickly pull together resources about using technology in the classroom, I can simply click the pedagogy tag and both the article on podcasting and the blog post on wikis are instantly sorted out from the rest of my Zotero library. Pretty nifty.

But how do you build up these tags? When you first start using Zotero it’s up to you to start building up your inventory of tags by typing them in using the Tags tab on the right of the Zotero panel. Some web pages may already have tags that Zotero recognizes and these are added automatically. Once you get a good working collection of tags built up, things get a little easier. Going back to my example above, let’s say I find another article on wikis that I want to keep track of. I’ve already got a wiki tag. Once I create an item for the new article I just drag it on top of the existing wiki tag to make the connection.

Visit the tags page on the Zotero web site for more in-depth information about using tags.

Give me More
One of the amazing things about Zotero (other than the fact that it’s free) is the incredible amount of data it will collect for you—automatically—even if you’re on a web page that doesn’t have a fully compatible site translator. To make sure you’re gathering all you can, make a quick check on the General preferences page.

With the Zotero pane open:

• Click on the Actions Menu (button that looks like a gear or cog wheel).
• Choose Preferences… from the drop-down menu.
• Click the General button and put a check in each of the boxes under the Miscellaneous section.