Zotero

Creating a Bibliography from Your Zotero Library

Creating a bibliography from your Zotero library is probably the easiest way to compile your citations.

To do so, select all the references or select an entire collection that you would like to be included in your bibliography.  Right click, and select the option Create Bibliography from Items (if you are creating a bibliography with only a few items from a collection) or Create Bibliography from Collection (if you are creating a bibliography with all the contents from a collection).  In the example below, this is what you will see when you create a bibliography by selecting the entire collection.

A screen will pop up asking which citation style you'd like to be used in the bibliography.  Select your preferred citation style. If you don't see the citation style you'd like to use, click on Manage Styles and select the citation style you'd like to be added to the list.

You can also select the output language and specify whether you want the output mode to be structured as citations or a bibliography.  You'll have 4 options for the output method: Save as RTF, Save as HTML, Copy to Clipboard, or Print.  Copy to Clipboard is the easiest option if you want to simply paste your bibliography into a Word document, but choose the option that works best for you.  In the example below, the options selected will generate a bibliography in APA Style 7th ed. that can be copied and pasted into a Word or other word processing program.

Paste the document or put it into the format that you selected, and there you go!  You have successfully created a bibliography from your Zotero library.

Creating a Bibliography Using a Word Processor Plugin

If you use word processing programs such as Microsoft Word, LibreOffice, and Google Docs, there is a Zotero plugin that you can use to automatically generate bibliographies as well as in-text citations and footnotes.  There are also plugins available for other word processing programs. 

Good news is that these plugins are already installed with Zotero, so they should automatically appear in your word processing program!  They'll be given their own Tab within the word processing program and will look like the example below.

To create a bibliography, you'll first need to add citation to your word processing document.  You can do so by click on the Add/Edit Citation       () icon.  A box will appear asking you to select a citation style for this document.  Pick your preferred citation style. 

If you choose to change this style later, click on Document Preferences () to make edits.

You'll then be asked to find the citation.  You can search for the document you want to cite individually, or you can switch to Classic Mode and click on the document in your Zotero Library.

When you find the item you want to cite, click on it, and it will appear in your Word document like the example below.  Repeat this process as your continue your work.

Once you have added all the citations you want to a document, place your cursor where you want the bibliography to start and click on the Add/Edit Bibliography ( ) icon.  Zotero will automatically generate a bibliography for you based on your in-text citations.

That's all you need to do to create a bibliography using a word processor plugin!