Zotero: A Beginner's Guide

Zotero Groups has two main purposes

• Share and collaborate with other Zotero users,
• Find citations on topics from Public groups.

You may create a group and/or be a member of a group. Each member may add content to the shared folder, then sync. Any new content appears in the group folder and all can see. Group owners have some control to limit feature of some members. NOTE: All group members must have Zotero accounts.

Group types

• Private groups allow members to share article citations AND PDFs (and other files). Ideal to create a private group for research or project team.
• Public groups only allow sharing citations because of copyright restrictions. These can helpful for finding citations on a topic or subject, which you may resuse.

Groups in Zotero Library. If you use groups, you have two sections in your Zotero collections pane (left side), and you may drag items back and forth between them at will.

• My Library section
• Group Libraries section

How to create a group...

1. Log in at Zotero.org.
2. Create a new group - Two types of groups....
   • Private: create for specific individuals (ideal for small groups). If you plan to share files (e.g. article PDFs), the group MUST be private when created (not after the fact).
   • Public: Anyone may create a public group, and you may search for existing public groups (specific  interest). NOTE: Public groups ONLY allow sharing of citations, not files (e.g. PDFs).