Zotero: Basics

My Library - the place to put your collections of items, with different titles

My publications - here you can list your own work, something that you want to share on Zotero.org (by dragging items from anywhere in your library) and choose a license for sharing

Duplicate items - items identified as potential duplicates

Unfiled items - items that don't belong to any of the collections

Trash - deleted items remain 30 days in Trash by default (you can change this) 

To cite, to change the language of the interface, to sync Zotero on different devices: click on Edit, then from the drop-down menu choose Preferences.

You can manage:

the columns in description (creator, item type, date, year, publisher, publication, date added, date modified, attachments, notes)

order of the columns (by clicking the icon on the right)

Additionally, you can also manage your attachments (title, creator, item type, date, year, publisher etc.)

You can access Zotero library on any computer with Internet access. If you sync you can access your data from any browser. 

NOTE: You need to have the same version of Zotero on synced devices.

The interface language defaults to matching the operating system's language in Zotero. You can change the language by selecting Preferences from the Edit menu and then clicking on the Advanced tab and selecting the language from the drop-down menu. 

Item details are:

Info - bibliographic information about the item, Zotero collects automatically, but you can edit and change field info

Notes - here you can take your own notes

Tags - use your own keywords

Related - here you can set relations between items in your collections (note: it is not possible to relate items from different libraries). This option is usually used for connecting book chapters to their parent volume, book reviews to the book reviewed, different versions of the same work, to link associated items from different collections, etc. 

To keep your Zotero interface in one language, but use another language for citations and bibliographies, you can select desired language from the appropriate location:

- the "Create Bibliography from Selected Item(s)" dialog

- the word processor integration plugin's document preferences window

- the Quick Copy section in the Export pane of Zotero preferences