Posted May 3, 2024 by Tiffany Lee
University Libraries is providing an institutional storage license for Zotero, a powerful reference management system. All Zotero users with a linked University of Nebraska-Lincoln email address will automatically be upgraded to unlimited personal and group cloud storage.
Faculty have responded positively to the Zotero Institution upgrade.
“Endeavors like this directly support research, graduate student mentoring and my teaching at UNL,” said Justin Olmanson, associate professor of teaching, learning and teacher education and chair of the Innovative Learning Technologies program.
Scout Calvert, chair of Libraries Research Partnerships, is excited that University Libraries can now better support users of this open-source, academy-owned tool. Zotero Institution provides all the features offered by the free version plus two significant upgrades: unlimited storage of bibliographic data, notes and PDFs of research articles and storage that is shareable with all members of a research team.
“We are thrilled to be able to provide Zotero Institution to UNL faculty and students,” Calvert said. “This robust tool will be of great assistance to our scholars who work in teams, making it easy for them to collaborate.”
Zotero integrates with Microsoft Word, LibreOffice and Google Docs so users can automatically create citations and bibliographies in thousands of styles as they write. Its built-in PDF reader allows annotations and highlighting of research materials. It also supports evidence synthesis projects, making it easy to store and organize documents during screening stages, and de-duplicate the results.
All current UNL affiliates who have linked their UNL email address in Zotero will be automatically upgraded; Zotero accounts will recognize UNL email addresses. If users registered with a different email address, they can add an institutional address to their account while logged in.
Calvert said University Libraries plans to celebrate this acquisition by hosting a launch party where members of the UNL community can get help with installation, ask questions and see demos. More details and additional events will be announced soon.
For questions, contact Calvert or Erica DeFrain, associate professor of University Libraries.
Zotero is a project of Digital Scholar, a nonprofit organization dedicated to the development of software and services for researchers and cultural heritage institutions. Development, maintenance, support and infrastructure costs for Zotero services are funded by storage subscriptions from individuals and organizations.
