This tutorial was created for the MLibrary 2.0 workshop series. If you're following this tutorial on your own you may want to review the contents of the resources page before you begin. When you're finished, please help us to improve by taking this brief survey. Comments and questions about the MLibrary 2.0 workshops can be directed to the forum planning committee.
In this tutorial we will cover the following topics:
A word about the goal of this workshop: although it's called "Firefox extensions for librarians and library patrons," and although I believe these tools can be extremely useful to you as a librarian (particularly if you do reference work), my emphasis throughout the workshop will be on the value of these tools for library patrons. For librarians, the main benefit of using these tools is convenience and efficiency: you already know how to do research, LibX and Zotero just make it easier. For many patrons, though, using these tools may make the difference between finding needed information and not finding it. One of my goals is to convince you, the library staff member, that these tools are worth promoting to patrons through instruction sessions.
- About This Tutorial
- 1 Firefox Basics
- 1.1 About Firefox
- 1.2 Installing Firefox
- 2 Firefox Extensions
- 2.1 Finding Extensions
- 2.2 Managing Extensions
- 3 An Introduction to LibX
- 3.1 Installing LibX
- 3.2 Searching from the Toolbar
- 3.2.1 Mirlyn
- 3.2.2 Electronic Journals
- 3.2.3 Find Articles
- 3.2.4 Find Databases
- 3.2.5 Library Web Pages
- 3.2.6 Google Scholar
- 3.3 Searching from the Context Menu
- 3.3.1 Keyword Search
- 3.3.2 Author Search
- 3.3.3 Search by ISBN, ISSN, DOI or PubMed ID
- 3.3.4 Searching Google Scholar
- 3.3.5 Off-Campus Proxy
- 3.4 Cues and Autolinks
- 3.4.1 Book Cues
- 3.4.2 SFX Cues
- 3.4.3 Autolinks
- 3.5 Google Scholar
- 3.5.1 Using the Toolbar and Context Menu
- 3.5.2 Using the Magic Button
- 3.5.3 Using the Magic Button with PDF Documents
- 3.6 LibX Menu and Preferences Panel
- 3.6.1 The LibX Menu
- 3.6.2 Preferences Panel: General Preferences
- 3.6.3 Preferences Panel: Context Menu
- 4 An Introduction to Zotero
- 4.1 Installing Zotero
- 4.2 Getting Started
- 4.2.1 Opening and Closing Zotero
- 4.2.2 Navigating the Zotero Window
- 4.3 Adding Items to your Library
- 4.3.1 Saving Citations from Catalogs and Databases
- 4.3.2 Creating Citations from Websites
- 4.3.3 Importing Citations from Other Applications
- 4.3.4 Creating Citations Manually
- 4.4 Adding Attachments, Links and Snapshots
- 4.4.1 Adding Attachments
- 4.4.2 Adding Links and Snapshots
- 4.5 Managing Your Library
- 4.5.1 Creating, Renaming and Deleting Collections
- 4.5.2 Moving, Removing and Deleting Citations
- 4.5.3 Sorting and Searching
- 4.5.4 Adding Tags, Notes and Related Items
- 4.6 Exporting Citations & Bibliographies
- 4.6.1 Exporting Citations to Other Applications
- 4.6.2 Saving Bibliographies
- 4.7 Zotero Preferences
- 4.7.1 General Preferences
- 4.7.2 Export Preferences
- 4.7.3 Shortcut Keys
- 4.7.4 Advanced Preferences
- 5 Using LibX and Zotero Together
Mozilla Firefox is an open source web browser - an alternative to proprietary browsers like Safari and Internet Explorer. Begun as a lighter version of the open source Mozilla browser, Firefox has been gaining steadily in popularity since its introduction in 2003.
One of the most useful features of Firefox, and one that sets it apart from other browsers, is its open architecture which allows developers to create third-party extensions to enhance Firefox's functionality. In this workshop we will explore two Firefox extensions in depth; you will also learn how to find, install and manage extensions.
Firefox is available for all major operating systems. If you haven't yet installed Firefox you can download it from the Mozilla Foundation. If you've previously installed Firefox, make sure you have the latest version (2.0 or higher is required for this tutorial). To check whether your current installation of Firefox is up to date, open Firefox and select "Check for Updates..." from the Help menu.
The sheer number of Firefox extensions boggles the mind, and many of these are of potential use to librarians and library patrons. Because we can't possibly cover them all in an hour, we'll be focusing on two particularly "deep" extensions: LibX and Zotero. You are encouraged to investigate other extensions on your own. Here are a couple of good lists created by librarians:
The best place to find Firefox extensions is Mozilla's Firefox Add-ons site. Here you can browse extensions by category or popularity, or search extensions by name. Be aware that the information on this site is frequently outdated; when in doubt, always check the author's homepage (usually linked from the Add-ons page) for a newer version. Also keep in mind that some extensions are only compatible with certain versions of Firefox, and occasionally extensions can step on each others' toes, resulting in various Firefox glitches. When deciding whether to install an extension from the Add-ons site you should always read the comments to see whether anyone else has had compatibility problems.
You can see which extensions you have installed by selecting "Add-ons" from the Tools menu in Firefox:
To check for updates to all of your extensions, click "Find Updates". By default, this check will be performed automatically every time you launch Firefox.
From the addons manager window you can highlight a particular extension, which will allow you to take the following actions:
You can also use the addons manager to manage Firefox themes, which are not covered in this workshop.
The best way to get acquainted with Firefox's extensions is to install a few and start experimenting. First we'll install LibX.
LibX was created by Godmar Back and Annette Bailey at Virginia Tech. Individual libraries can create their own custom LibX editions, most of which are hosted on the LibX website. The University of Michigan Libraries edition was created in July 2006 and is maintained by Jacob Glenn.
The UM edition of LibX provides the following features:
. Clicking this icon searches SFX at UM.After you've made sure you have the latest version of Firefox, you can download the LibX extension by following these steps:
This is a security feature designed to prevent sites from installing malicious software on your computer.
Again, this is a security feature designed to prevent the installation of malicious software.
The most straightforward way to use LibX is to type (or drag and drop) text into the search box and then click the search button to the right of the box. Searching via the toolbar is mostly self-explanatory, but we will briefly cover the options that are available. To try any of the sample searches below, simply select the search text and drag it onto the LibX search box.
There are a few LibX user interface quirks to note before trying a search:
selects the type of search (author, title, keyword, etc.), while the menu to the right of the box 
selects the catalog to search (Mirlyn, E-journals, etc). Because each catalog is configured with different options, the options displayed in the left-hand menu will change when a different catalog is selected. This can require a lot of mousing back and forth between the two menus, which can be a bit awkward.
also behaves this way). However, the catalog menu also doubles as the search button. Clicking on the small triangle to the right of the menu label will drop down a list of catalogs, but clicking on the menu label will initiate a search. This can result in a lot of accidental searches and general confusion for LibX beginners.
to the immediate right of the search box allows you to add more search fields. However, this feature only works properly when searching Mirlyn and Google Scholar. Although you can add extra fields when searching other catalogs, the extra terms will be ignored when the search is performed. This is an interface bug that should be fixed in future versions of LibX. Extra search fields can be removed using the small red "X" button 
.
clears the contents of all search fields.
at the far right of the LibX toolbar isn't really a button — it's a target for drag-and-drop searching of Google Scholar. If you click it, LibX will show an alert to this effect. We'll cover drag-and-drop functionality in Google Scholar shortly.The Mirlyn library catalog can be searched using any combination of the following options:
Try the following sample searches:
- Keyword: Rubyfruit jungle
- Journal title: Tetrahedron Letters
- ISBN: 0679750150
- Call Number: TK5105.8885
You can add fields for complex queries.
The E-journals database can be searched using the following options:
Try the following sample searches:
- Subject: Math
- Start of ISSN: 0305-7518
Find Articles (also known as Search Tools) can be searched by keyword in any of the Search Tools quickset categories:
Try the following sample searches:
- Arts: Bathsheba Grossman
- Engineering: Terfenol-D
- Science: Loop quantum gravity
Find Databases (via Search Tools) can be searched by title only.
Library web pages can be searched by keyword only.
Google Scholar can be searched from the toolbar using any combination of Keyword, Article Title, Journal Title, and Author. Although searching Google Scholar via the toolbar is easy enough, LibX provides an even better way via the "Magic Button," which we'll cover in section 3.5.1.
LibX provides a context (right-click) menu to make it easier to search text you find on the web. If you're using a Mac and don't have a two-button mouse, you'll need to Control-click to see the context menu options. These options can be configured via the Context Menu tab in the LibX preferences panel, which we'll cover in section 3.6.3.
Select some arbitrary text, such as Hypnerotomachia Poliphili, and right-click (Ctrl-click if you're on a Mac). You should see options to search Mirlyn by keyword, title, and author. You'll also notice an option for searching Google Scholar and one for reloading the page via the library's proxy server; we'll cover these in just a minute.
Selecting one of these options will open the corresponding Mirlyn search in a new Firefox tab.
In the previous example, you may have noticed that the context menu option for Author search transposed the two selected words. LibX automatically does this for author searches via the context menu, so that selecting the common form of the name will result in a proper catalog search (last name first, first name last). To see a better example of this, try searching the following text by author via the context menu: Jules Verne.
Try the following sample searches:
- ISBN: 006073132X, 9780743226714
- ISSN: 0305-7518
- DOI: 10.1038/nrmicro1706
- PubMed ID: PMID: 3966281
LibX is smart enough to tell when you have selected certain types of document identifiers: ISBNs, ISSNs, DOIs and PubMed ID numbers. If you select one of these numbers and right-click, LibX will display the appropriate search options. Try a few of the searches at the right to see this feature in action. Note: the autolink feature of LibX, which we'll cover in section 3.4.3, turns these numbers into links. To search using the context menu you need to select the text and right-click, although clicking the autolink performs the same search.
When selecting an ISBN, you should see an option to search for related ISBNs. This feature uses OCLC's xISBN service to find ISBNs related to the current selection — useful for finding other editions of a book. When you search for related ISBNs you will be dropped into Mirlyn's ISBN index as with a normal ISBN search, but at the far left-hand side of your browser window you will see an extra frame:
Clicking the ISBN links in the frame will take you to the Mirlyn index entry for a related edition of the same book. Note: xISBN is not foolproof, and will occasionally give spurious results.
When selecting an ISSN, the LibX context menu will display an option to search Mirlyn for that ISSN. When selecting a DOI or PubMed ID number, the context menu will display an option to search SFX. LibX can be configured to display any search option in the context menu; we will cover this functionality in section 3.6.3.
By default, LibX will display Google Scholar search as a context menu option when a keyword is selected (i.e., any text not determined to be an ISBN, ISSN, DOI or PubMed ID). This gives you yet another way to search Google Scholar; it works just the same as searching via the toolbar. We'll cover all the methods of searching Google Scholar in section 3.5.
This is one that's difficult to demonstrate while on campus, but you should be aware of it. Right click anywhere on any web page and select "Reload via University of Michigan Libraries Off-Campus Proxy" to do just that. This can be very useful when doing research from off campus.
Perhaps the most convenient feature of LibX is its ability to insert highly visible "cues" into web pages that contain bibliographic information, making the library a ubiquitous presence in users' online workflow. LibX does this in three different ways: with book cues, SFX and autolinks.
These links will open in a new tab.
Book cues are inserted into pages that contains ISBNs, as well as search result pages for most popular search engines. You should see cues when viewing an individual book page or results page on the following websites (follow the links at the right and click the cue to search Mirlyn for the corresponding ISBN or keyword).
Book cues make it easy to see whether a book is available at the library when searching e-commerce sites like Amazon.com. They also serve as a constant reminder of the library's presence by providing catalog links from the major search engines' results pages.
The second type of cue inserted by LibX is the SFX/MGetIt cue. These function exactly like MGetIt links displayed in many of the library's subscription databases; the difference is that LibX is able to insert links into any website that uses COinS.
COinS (Content Objects in Spans) is a convention for including OpenURLs in HTML documents (OpenURL is the specification on which SFX is built). By following this simple convention, websites can provide a means for software that recognizes COinS to automatically link to the full text of a cited document. Among the many websites that mark up citations using COinS are Wikipedia, CiteULike, Worldcat.org, COPAC, Citebase, and HubMed.
Because LibX detects COinS markup automatically and inserts the appropriate SFX link , anyone who has LibX installed will see an MGetIt icon next to each citation published using COinS. Clicking the link will take the user to the full text of the article, if it is available. For some real-life examples of how this works, try the following links (each will open in a new tab): Wikipedia, CiteULike, Worldcat.org.
Marking up web pages with COinS is easier than you might think. In section 5 we'll see how to use this feature in conjunction with Zotero to easily create and distribute "smart bibliographies" with links to each bibliographic item, without writing a single character of markup.
LibX includes a feature that will recognize certain types of document identifiers (ISBNs, ISSNs, DOIs and PubMed ID numbers) on a web page and automatically turn them into links to the appropriate searches. If you've been following this tutorial all the way through then you've already seen some examples of this feature. If you haven't already, go back to Section 3.3.3 and try clicking the autolinks instead of searching via the context menu. Autolink searches work just like context menu searches, but they are a bit faster.
Occasionally, LibX will return a false positive for certain types of numbers that look like ISBNs or ISSNs, but aren't. One example of this is for certain types of date ranges. While annoying, this bug does not make autolinking any less convenient; however, if you wish you can turn off autolinking via the LibX menu.
Support for Google Scholar is a very cool (and little-known) feature of LibX that drastically reduces the number of clicks needed to reach an article's full text. You can use Scholar via the toolbar, context menu, or by using the "magic button."
You can use the LibX toolbar and context menu to search Google Scholar by any combination of keyword, article title, journal title, and author. By default the context menu will only display an option to search Google Scholar by keyword (we'll see how to add other options in section 3.6.3). The toolbar can be used to construct an arbitrarily complex query through the use of multiple fields:
While constructing such complex queries can be useful when looking for a specific citation, much of the benefit of LibX's Google Scholar support comes from the ease of using the "magic button," which we describe below.
As mentioned in section 3.2, the Scholar button isn't really a button — it's a drag-and-drop target. Try selecting the following text and dragging it onto the Scholar button in your LibX toolbar: Unskilled and Unaware.
Notice that LibX has opened two new tabs in your Firefox window and switched to the second tab (an SFX results page). The other tab contains the results of the Google Scholar search. LibX analyzes the Scholar search results to determine whether any matched your query. If so, LibX searches SFX for the article (or follows the link if it's freely available) and opens the results in a new tab. Here's another example to try: hierarchical subject folksonomies.
While Google Scholar does not index all resources to which the library subscribes, using the magic button can drastically reduce the number of steps required to find an article. In the best cases (when the full text of the article is freely available online) the magic button allows you to find articles with a single click, as you'll see in the next example.
The magic button can also be used when viewing PDF documents with the Adobe Reader plugin (this feature only works with Firefox on Windows — sorry Mac users). To see this feature in action, click the following link to open a PDF document in a new tab: Beautiful Concurrency. Now scroll down to the references section, select the first part of the title of the second citation ("Jingle Bells: Solving the Santa Claus Problem") and drag it onto the Scholar button. A full text PDF of the referenced paper should open automatically in a new tab. Wasn't that easy?
Many LibX options can be customized through the LibX menu and preferences panel.
Links displayed in the LibX drop-down menu:
The LibX menu contains a number of useful links, as well as a couple of options. As we saw in section 3.4.3, the autolink feature can be enabled or disabled via this menu. There's also an option to display the LibX preferences panel, which we'll explore below.
Although we don't have time to go over the LibX preferences in detail, there are a few important settings you should be aware of. The General Preferences tab allows you to customize LibX's behavior when opening search results. By default, LibX will open results in a new Firefox tab and switch to that tab. You can also display the results in a new tab, in a new window, or in the same tab. The General Preferences tab also provides an option for turning autolinking on or off, which you can also do via the LibX menu.
The Context Menu tab allows you to customize which search options are displayed in the LibX context menu. By default, displayed options are minimal (as we saw in section 3.3); however, any LibX search option can be displayed in the context menu. The context menu options are organized by link type: you can choose which options to display when selecting arbitrary text, ISBNs, ISSNs, DOIs, or PubMed ID numbers. You can also choose whether to display the "Reload via off-campus proxy" option (it is recommended that you leave this selected).
Here are some context menu options you may want to enable (in future versions these may be enabled by default):
The last two preferences tabs, Ajax Options and About, can be safely ignored for now.
Zotero is a Firefox extension with the same features as most bibliographic management tools and several more to boot. Zotero knows how to extract citations from a wide variety of websites, library catalogs, and subscription databases. Once you've saved a citation Zotero allows you to add notes, annotations, file attachments, keyword tags, and links to other citations in your personal library. Because Zotero works right in your web browser, it makes it very easy to save citations as you do your research, without interrupting your workflow the way some other bibliographic management tools do. Zotero also makes it easy to import and export citations, and creating formatted bibliographies is a snap. For more information see the Documentation section of the Zotero website.
If you have Firefox 2.0 or higher you can download the Zotero extension from the Zotero website. You may need to go through some of the same steps we covered in section 3.1 when installing. Don't forget to restart Firefox before you continue. If Zotero installed successfully you should see a Zotero icon 
at the bottom of your Firefox screen.
You can open Zotero in any of the following ways:
in the bottom right corner of your Firefox window.
in your Firefox toolbar.To close Zotero, click the small close icon 
in the top right corner of the Zotero window, or repeat any of the actions you used to open the window. You can resize any of the horizontal or vertical panel dividers by mousing over the panel boundary until you see a double-arrow icon and then clicking and dragging the divider. You can also use the Toggle Full Screen button 
to take Zotero into or out of Full Screen mode.
The Zotero window is organized into three columns, which proceed from most general to most specific (if you're used to using the Mac OSX Finder in column view you'll find this interface familiar).
Zotero's left column.
The left column displays global collections: your library (which contains all saved items), individual collections and sub-collections (which you'll need to create), and tags (which can be thought of as another type of collection that collocates items across multiple collection folders). You'll notice the following icons:
We'll cover most of these functions later on in the tutorial. For now, you should know that the Library icon contains all of your citations and that Collections contain subsets of your Library. Unlike a traditional filing system, Zotero allows you to save items in multiple locations.
Zotero's middle column.
The middle column displays a list of items from the collection selected in the left panel. By default, the only item that should be in your Zotero library after a fresh install is a link to the Zotero Quick Start Guide. The following icons are displayed above the middle column:
In addition you'll notice a search box to the right of these icons. You can use this box to filter the items displayed in the center column. It's a "live" search, which means it will begin filtering as soon as you begin typing. Later we'll see how to perform advanced searches of your library, which can be saved as "smart" searches.
You'll also see an icon next to each item that appears in the center column. There are a number of icons Zotero uses to represent different media types; we'll cover some of these in the next section.
Zotero's right column.
The right column displays information about the item selected in the center panel. If you don't have any items selected in the center panel then the right panel will appear empty. If you select the Quick Start Guide you'll see some notes and a link button in the right column. Selecting bibliographic items will display a set of five tabs you can use to manage item metadata.
In addition you may see the following buttons in Zotero's right column:
(opens website associated with the item, if there is one)
(uses SFX to locate full text of an item)Zotero lets you add items to your library in several ways. The easiest way is to save citations Zotero recognizes automatically; this works with many library catalogs, websites, and subscription databases. You can also create citations for arbitrary web pages (Zotero will try to find as much metadata as it can on the page, but you may have to fill in the rest by hand). You can import citations from other bibliographic management tools, such as EndNote or RefWorks. Finally, if all else fails you can create citations manually by entering metadata into the provided fields. Below we'll walk through some of the more common ways of adding items to your Zotero library.
Some Zotero media type icons:
- Book
- Journal Article
- Newspaper Article
- Film
- File
- Collection
Zotero automatically detects citation metadata from a wide variety of websites (a full list of Zotero translators is available); these include Mirlyn, Google Books and Google Scholar, CSA, ProQuest, JSTOR, and many others. When Zotero senses that you are viewing a compatible web page, it will display one of the icons at right in your Firefox address bar (after the URL of the current page). Note: these are just a few of the media types Zotero can identify; other icons will be displayed for artwork, blog posts, etc. In general, you can just look for an icon at the far right of your address bar to see whether Zotero has found any data on the page.
To save a citation simply click the icon in your address bar. If you are viewing a collection of items (in, say, a Mirlyn search results list), clicking the folder icon will open a dialog box with a list of all the items on the page. You can then select which items you want to save. Note that Zotero only senses whatever is listed on the page; if a results list spans multiple pages you will need to save the contents of each page individually.
Here are a few links to try saving items with Zotero: Mirlyn, Proquest, Worldcat.org. Try your own examples with your favorite databases (chances are they work with Zotero).
If you don't see one of the Zotero media icons appear in your address bar, don't worry — Zotero lets you create a citation directly from a web page. Click the Create New Item from Current Page icon in the middle column to save any web page to your Zotero library. Zotero will fill in any information it can glean from the page, but you may have to add some information manually. You can do this by clicking the individual fields in the Info tab of the right column:
Zotero gives you a few options when saving websites. If you just want to cite the URL, you can save a link to the current page using the Save Link to Current Page icon . You can also take a snapshot of a page so that you can refer to it later, even if the content changes. Do this by clicking the Take Snapshot of Current Page icon .
Try adding some of your favorite websites to your Zotero library as links, snapshots, or items.
Zotero allows you to import citations from other bibliographic management programs such as Endnote or RefWorks. Because we can't cover these other programs during this workshop, this tutorial does not include detailed information on migrating your citation library to and from other programs. However, if you just want to quickly import citations from another program you can do so by following these steps:
and select Import.Adding a citation manually.
If you can't find any citation information online, it is still possible to create citations manually. Click the New Item icon in the middle column and select the type of resource you are citing. A list of blank metadata fields will appear in the right column. Click to the right of the field labels to edit the fields.
Zotero lets you enrich your saved citations by attaching almost any kind of file to them. This is one of the many ways in which LibX and Zotero can work together: after saving a citation, you can use LibX to easily locate the full text of the article and then save the full text as an attachment to its citation.
The Attachments menu.
To add an attachment to an item in your library, follow these steps:
You can try this with one of the citations you saved in section 4.3.1. To see how well this feature works alongside the LibX extension, try selecting a citation in Zotero's middle column and dragging it onto the "magic button." Once you've located the full text, save it to your desktop. Then add the file as an attachment as described above. Note: you can also configure Zotero to locate the full text of cited references using SFX; we'll see how to do that in section 4.7.1.
Once you've added the full text of an item as an attachment, the middle column entry and contents of the item's Attachments tab should look something like this:
Using the Attachments tab to view file details.
Once you've added an attachment to one of your library items you'll notice a triangle icon next to the item when it appears in the middle column. You can click this icon to view all attachments, links, notes, snapshots, and related items associated with this item. When the attachment is selected, Zotero's right column will display buttons to locate the file (in your file browser) or to open it. You'll also see a field for any notes you wish to include about the selected attachment. Attachment details can also be viewed by clicking the Attachments tab for an item and selecting an individual attachment.
Another way to enrich your collection of citations is by attaching links and snapshots of web pages. We've already seen that Zotero lets us do this via the icons above the middle column: , . When you have nothing selected, clicking these icons will save a link or snapshot of the current page as an item in your library. If you click them when a collection is selected, the item will be added to that collection. Selecting the same icons via the Attachments menu will save a link or snapshot as an attachment to the selected item. (You cannot attach anything to links nor snapshots.) By default, Zotero will automatically take a snapshot when saving an item from a web page and attach the snapshot to that item. You can disable this behavior via the General Preferences tab in the Preferences panel.
Although we don't have time to cover it in this workshop, Zotero does provide the ability to annotate web snapshots with comments and highlighting. If you're curious about this feature you can select a snapshot and experiment with using the annotation tools in the upper left corner of the snapshot: 
Zotero makes it easy to organize your library, and provides several different means of doing so. The most obvious way to do this is by creating named collections within your library. These are similar to directories in a filesystem; the difference is that items can live in multiple collections at once. Moving citations between collections can be accomplished via drag-and-drop, and Zotero's live search makes it easy to find things when you can't remember where you put them. Finally, you can organize citations by adding tags, notes, and links to related citations.
Collection context menu options.
Collections appear under your Library icon in Zotero's left column. You can add a new collection by clicking the New Collection icon above the left column. A dialog box will open prompting you to name the new collection. Once you've clicked OK a new folder icon will appear in the left column. By right-clicking this icon you'll see a number of options for organizing your collections.
Just like in your computer's file system, you can create an arbitrary number of subcollections under a given collection. Selecting New Subcollection will prompt you to name a new subcollection. You can also choose to rename the collection, or to remove it entirely. Removing a collection will also remove all of its subcollections. Because Zotero uses a database to store all saved items (which are only referenced from collections), removing a collection does not delete any of the items contained in that collection. We'll learn how to delete items entirely in the next section.
Note that unlike files in your computer's file system, Zotero items can exist in multiple collections at once. This is because collections really just contain links to items, not the items themselves. In a sense they are analogous to a shortcut you might put on your desktop: deleting the shortcut does not remove the file itself.
The context menu for items in a collection.
We've already covered creating and editing items in sections 3.4.2 and 3.4.3. Once you've saved an item and created one or more collections to store it in, you can add the item to the collection by simply clicking the item in the middle column and dragging it onto the appropriate folder icon. Holding down the Shift key while clicking will select multiple items. You can drag items from your library, or from another collection. Because all items are automatically stored in your library, there is never any need to drag items into your library.
To remove an item from a collection first browse to the collection, select the item and right-click (or control-click). Select Remove Selected Item to remove the item from this collection (or hit your Delete key). You will not be prompted by Zotero, because the item isn't really being deleted. You can delete items entirely by selecting Delete Selected Item from Library from the context menu, or by selecting the item in your library and pressing the Delete key. In this case Zotero will prompt you to confirm the deletion. Selecting Show in Library from the context menu will take you to that item's entry in your library.
Sorting items using headers.
You can easily sort the items in your library or in a collection by clicking the headers in the middle column. Click the active header to toggle the sort order between ascending and descending, or click another header to change the sort field. The headers can be configured using the "columns" icon in the upper right corner of the middle column 
. Clicking this icon will display a list of sort fields that can be added to the middle column. (Adding too many fields may crowd the display, depending on the size of your monitor.)
The search box above the middle column can be used to filter the item list. It's a live search, which means it starts filtering as soon as you begin typing, and it searches all fields at once. For more complex searches you can click the Advanced Search icon 
to open the advanced search dialog.
Search results will be displayed in the area below the three bottom buttons. Double-clicking an item in the search results will close the search dialog and take you to that item's entry in your library. The advanced search fields also have autocomplete functionality, so if you begin typing in a Title search field a list of matching titles will be displayed below the field as you type.
The Save Search button allows you to save any search as a "smart" collection, to which any new items matching your search will automatically be added as they are imported into your library. These smart collections are always created at the top level of your collection hierarchy and cannot be made into subcollections.
Adding a tag to an item.
Tagging items is easy in Zotero. To add a tag to an item, select the item in the middle column and click the Tags tab in the right column, then click the Add button and type in your tag. You can also click the other tag labels to change those tags, or click the small minus sign to the right of the label to remove the tag. Note that tags are global items that can be applied to any item: editing or creating tags in the Tags tab will create the tag if it does not already exist, but removing a tag does not delete it (the tag is simply removed from that particular item).
When importing items from a library catalog or subscription database, Zotero will automatically add subject headings, keywords, and controlled vocabulary terms as tags. You can disable this behavior via the General Preferences tab in the Preferences panel.
The tag manager pane.
To manage your global tags, use the tag manager pane in the bottom half of Zotero's left column. This pane can be used to filter the middle column by tag: left-clicking a tag will display all items with this tag, and selecting multiple tags will display only items having that combination of tags. When at least one tag is selected, all tags that do not co-occur with it are greyed out (unselectable), so you can't select nonexistent tag combinations. You can change this behavior by checking/unchecking the Display all tags button below the tag display. When this button is unchecked the greyed-out tags will not be displayed. You can deselect tags using the Deselect all button. The live filter box can be used to filter the tags that are displayed — useful if you have a large number of tags. Tags can also be used as sorting and searching criteria.
Right-clicking (or control-clicking) a tag in the tag manager reveals options to rename or remove the tag. Unlike changes made in the Tags tab for a particular item, changes made in the tag manager are global: renaming a tag will rename all instances associated with items, and removing it will remove it from all items to which it had been attached. This is why it is often useful to think of tags as folders that span multiple collections.
Editing a note in the dialog.
In addition to tagging items in your library you can add longer notes. First select an item in the middle column, then click the Notes tab in the right column and click the Add button. You can type your note into the resulting dialog box. Notice the two links at the bottom of the dialog: these allow you to easily add tags and related items without leaving the notes dialog. Once you've finished typing you can close the dialog; the note will be saved automatically. You can add as many notes as you like in this way. You can remove the note by clicking the small minus sign to the right of the note title. If you need to edit the note, clicking the title will allow you to edit it directly in Zotero's right column. The button at the bottom of this pane will open the note in a separate window.
Creating notes from text you find on the Web is easy: with your note open in the right column, select the text in your browser and drag it into the note's text box. You can also highlight text in your browser, right-click, and select either Add Selection to Zotero Note or Create Zotero Item and Note from Selection. The latter option will save the current page to your Zotero library and add the highlighted text as a note.
You can also add Standalone notes that aren't attached to any particular item. Simply click the New Standalone Note icon above the middle column and enter your note into the text box that appears in the right column. These notes will appear as items in your library.
As a final way to enhance the data in your library you can add relationships between items via the Related tab in Zotero's right column. Clicking the Add button will display a dialog box you can use to browse your entire library and select related items.
Displaying a related item.
After clicking OK a "relationship" or link between the two items will be created. Note that like friendship, this relationship is symmetric: when you add a relationship between A and B, a second link is automatically created between B and A. Clicking the title of the related item in the Related tab will toggle this relationship, taking you to the related item's entry in your library. You can remove relationships by clicking the small minus sign to the right of the related title.
In the unlikely event that you should ever desire to use a bibliographic management tool other than Zotero, you can easily export your entire library in a format that other, more primitive applications can understand.
above Zotero's left column and select Export.You can also export individual items or ad-hoc groups of items by selecting them in the middle column and choosing Export Selected Items from the context menu.
Zotero lets you generate bibliographies in a variety of citation styles and file formats. You can do this by collection (right-click the folder icon and select Create Bibliography from Collection), or by selecting ad-hoc groups of items in the middle column and choosing Create Bibliography from Selected Items from the context menu. A dialog box will open allowing you to choose the file format and citation style. You can also copy your bibliography to the clipboard for easy pasting into a word processor, or send it directly to the printer.
You can also generate ad-hoc bibliographies simply by dragging items from Zotero's middle column into any web-based form or text box. A citation will appear, formatted in whichever citation style you've selected as your default for exporting bibliographies. This is a handy feature to use when writing blog posts or working with Google Docs.
Finally, Zotero integrates with Microsoft Word to generate bibliographies right in your word processor. While we don't have the time to cover this functionality here, you are encouraged to investigate the documentation on the Zotero website.
To be completed at a later date.
To configure SFX, use this url:
http://p9003-sfx.lib.umich.edu.proxy.lib.umich.edu/sfx_local
The three main difficulties faced by new library users are (1) how to navigate among the resources purchased or licensed by the library, (2) how to search those resources effectively, and (3) how to manage information once it is found. LibX drastically simplifies the first two tasks, and Zotero simplifies the last task. Put them together and you've just streamlined the entire research experience in a fairly dramatic way.
To see how this works, try the following:
Of course, there are many other ways that LibX and Zotero can work together; they are natural complements. The more you use them, the more great uses you will discover!
