Zotero is an open source citation manager, developed at George Mason University and released in 2006.
Zotero is a free, easy-to-use tool to help you collect, organize, cite, and share your research sources. Zotero can help you clip and cite books, articles, video clips, mp3 files, images, web pages and other resources and lets you choose from thousands of different citation styles (APA, MLA, Chicago, e.g.). You can link Zotero to Google Docs and Microsoft Word (and other applications) to automatically generate a bibliography from the items you want to cite.
Zotero allows you to attach PDFs, notes and images to your citations, organize them into collections for different projects, and create bibliographies. Zotero automatically indexes the full-text content of your library.
With Zotero you can create and join research groups to focus on any topic you choose. Each group can share its own research library, complete with files, bibliographic data, notes and discussion threads. Groups can include as many members as you like and can be private or public. It automatically comes with up to 300MB of online storage.
If you want to create a quick bibliography for a project, you can also try ZoteroBib, which generates citations from an identifier such as title, URL, or ISBN. No account or installation required.
Zotero and Mendeley (another citation manager) will work together. Find more information: Importing Mendeley into Zotero
Quick Tip: Sometimes the library's proxy doesn't interact correctly with Zotero. You may see a yellow bar at the top of the web page you're viewing, which indicates a redirection. Select "Don't Proxy this Site." You can turn off the proxy redirection by going to the Zotero extension in your browser. Click the "Manage" option for the Zotero extension, go to "Preferences" >>"Proxies" and uncheck the "Enable Proxy redirection" box.
Zotero works by saving articles from journals, websites, and images directly from your web browser into the Zotero application on your computer. You also have the option of syncing your Zotero library to a free online Zotero account, functionally storing what you cite in cloud storage. This is optional but strongly recommended. Your Zotero "library" is saved in the event your laptop/device is lost, damaged, or stolen.
Step 1: Download Zotero.
Step 2: Install Zotero connector for either Google Chrome, Safari, or Firefox.
Step 3 (optional): create your free Zotero account, and then link your account to your Zotero application (instructions under the “Data Syncing” heading).
Step 4: Get familiar with saving items and files to Zotero.
Step 5: Start researching with the handy Zotero Basics guide.