I use Zotero when I am doing research or scholarly writing but I also have a handful of other reasons why I use Zotero which I thought I’d share.

(If you are new to Zotero, I have a H5P presentation that is available for reading (and use and re-mixing) dedicated to the why and how of using Zotero for those involved in Canadian legal research.)

§ Zotero + EZProxy = Easier Proxy

Many institutions require you to sign-in to a proxy system to access electronic resources while you are off-campus. The Zotero Connector can make this more convenient. When it detects that you are using an institutional proxy to access a particular site, it will ask if you want to remember it in the future. If you agree, Zotero will automatically use the proxy for matching URLs in the future. You should be routed through the proxy login site if you’re not already logged in, then you can access the database as you normally would.

Zotero Connector Preferences

Since Zotero automatically prompts me whether I would like to re-load the page with my university proxy system, I never have to be bothered to re-find the work already in front of me, from the library website in order to get a proxy’ed URL.

And, in the rare occasion that Zotero doesn’t realize that the content I’m looking at is behind a paywall that I could pass through with my university credentials, all I have to do is right click the webpage in my browser and pick my choice of proxies:

And then, if I need to extract the original url for sharing with others, I just have to right click the page, and select from the Zotero options:

§ I use Zotero to build Scholar and ORCiD profiles for myself and others

In my previous role as Scholarly Communications librarian, I used to provide a service in which I would collect, to the best of my abilities, all of a faculty member’s publications and add them to a Zotero collection.

The ability to export a folder full of citations into a signal BibTex file, means you can easily upload a bibliography into Google Scholar and into ORCiD.

§ I use Zotero, Kerko, and Teams to collect and share a collection of Faculty Publications for Windsor Law

I use Zotero to update and maintain a bibliography of Faculty Publications from Windsor Law.

Whenever I get an update from CanLii, HeinOnline, Google Alerts, or SSRN that a colleague has recently published a work, I add the item into Zotero with a couple of clicks. Then, through the magic of Kerko and Reclaim Hosting, those changes sent along and made to Windsor Law Faculty Publications

Kerko publishes the updates as an RSS feed. Few people use an RSS reader nowadays, so to keep my colleagues up to date, I’ve created a Microsoft Teams channel which uses its connector feature to publish its feed. Individuals can use Teams to decide if they would like to be notified of new items or not.

Zotero is pretty great software.