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Zotero for Mac: The Built-In PDF, HTML, & EPUB Reader

Zotero is a free application that can collect, organize, annotate, cite, and share research. While Zotero for Mac has the same functionality as Zotero for Windows, there will be some differences.

 

Colorful, decorative horizontal line.

 

- INTERACT WITH THE FULL TEXT YOU CAPTURED -

You can highlight text in two ways, create notes, and as the number of captured items grows, use tools to help manage them.  Just double click on any captured full text item in a Zotero list to begin using it.

Zotero 7 for Mac: Built-In PDF, HTML, & EPUB Reader (6 min., 53 sec. video)

 

A large screen shot of a PDF article open in Zotero's built-in reader. There are three panels numbered left to right 1-3 whose contents are explained below.

 

PANEL 1

 

- NAVIGATION -

Article Pages

Click the 4 by 4 square of tiny pages to bring up thumbnails of all pages in an article. The thumbnails are clickable.

Clickable thumbnails of the pages in the article let you jump to any page.

 

Your Notes and Highlights

The default view is all of the annotations (notes, highlights) you create for an article. This icon shows a sticky note.

View and search your notes (annotations) and highlights for this article.  Click any item to jump to that part of the article.  Click the three-dot menu to add more text to a note, change an item's color, or delete it.

If you color code your notes and highlights, say green means quote this in my paper and purple means ask my professor about this, you can click a color in this color bar which will appear at the very bottom of the panel to see just the green items or just the purple items, etc.  To go back to viewing everything at once, click all the colors.

Five clickable, tiny different colored squares--yellow, red, green, purple, magenta.

 

Article Outline

The third and last icon in the first panel indicates an outline of an article and clicking on it retrieves a clickable outline of an article if one is available.

A clickable outline of the article allows you to jump to any section of the article.  Not available for all articles.

PANEL 2

 

- INTERACT WITH THE FULL TEXT -

In the middle panel, you can read your article, highlight sections of it in two ways, underline, and create notes.  Choose from 8 colors to color code your highlights and notes if you want.

 

TOOLBAR LEFT TO RIGHT:

 

The PDF reader toolbar with 6 tools: 1) square with letter A, highlight text; 2) letter A underlined, underline text; 3) a sticky note, create a note; 4) letter T, add text; 5) a square has a dotted line all the way around it, select area; 6) a pencil, draw.

 

  • (1) Highlight text
  • (2) Underline text
  • (3) Create a note
  • (4) Add text
  • (5) Select area
  • (6) Draw

PANEL 3

 

- CREATE TAGS, CONNECT RELATED ITEMS -

The third panel here is the same one on the main Zotero screen.  The default view is always Info, the article's citation.  The toolbar is the same.

 

RIGHT TOOLBAR, TOP TO BOTTOM:

 

Nine icons: (1) Syncing - 2 curved arrows form a circle; (2) A sheet of paper with the letter i in a circle; (3) A rectangle with a few horizontal lines in it; (4) A paperclip; (5) A Post It note; (6) A tiny Greek column library with a folder; (7) A paper hang tag; (8) Two chain links; (9) An arrow pointing to the right enclosed in a circle with a tiny drop down menu arrow on the side.

 

  • (1) Sync With Zotero.org
  • (2) Info
  • (3) Abstract
  • (4) Attachments
  • (5) Notes
  • (6) Libraries and Collections
  • (7) Tags
  • (8) Related
  • (9) Locate

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