ZoteroBib

What ZoteroBib Does

ZoteroBib (zbib) is a tool for collecting citations for books, articles, web pages, and other forms, or "chunks" of information when doing research.

A person can collect citations "on the fly" while doing research. The gathered citations can then be copied into a document.

Using zbib is simple, keep one browser window or tab open to https://zib.org and use another browser window or tab to do research.

When you find a source of useful information, copy an identifier for the work (ISBN, DOI, title, PMID, URL, arXivid, or other) into the "Cite" box, and click on the Cite Button.

zbib uses identifiers to locate the citation for the source, and adds the citation to a bibliography.

And Now the Identifiers!

"Identifiers" are strings of characters used as short-hand for identifying "documents" and where to locate them.  They serve as "location indicators" much like the address of a house.

The different kinds of identifiers are explained below. We'll use them to construct a bibliography of works about a particular subject of interest to many students.

ISBN : International Standard Book Number

Most every book published is assigned a unique number to identify it. They can be 10 or 13 digits, include the letter X, and often have dashes between groups of digits.

For example:

         978-1-86189-391-8

and

        978-1-77126-168-5

Copy and paste these ISBN's into the ZoteroBib "Cite" box one at a time to see the books assigned to see what the books are. You can also enter ISBNs without hyphens.

DOI: Digital Object Identifier

DOIs, like ISBNs, are structured character strings assigned to "chunks of information" to identify them. DOIs are relatively new, and are used largely to identify journal articles, book chapters, conference proceedings, and other chunks of information. They are a bit more complicated in form.

For example:

      10.1103/PhysRevE.80.046201

and

     10.2752/175174414X13828682779249

Copy and paste these DOI's into the ZoteroBib "Cite" box to see the works assigned to them.

Other Identifiers

URL: Universal Resource Locator

You are likely familiar with URLs, they are used for identifying resources on the internet, most often web pages that start out with https://

For example:

https://en.pizzadixit.com/the-real-history-of-margherita-pizza/

Copy and paste this URL into the ZoteroBib "Cite" box to see the work assigned to it.

Title: Title of a book or, a journal article, or other.

Searching with a title work less well than other identifiers because titles can be variable and duplicated.

It's worth a try:

Inventing the pizzeria: a history of pizza making in Naples

Copy and paste this title into the ZoteroBib "Cite" box to see the book's citation.  Be aware that the system can choke up on titles; keep trying.

If the tool being really obstinate, use the book's ISBN: 9781472586179, and know titles sometimes don't work well :^)

A Few More Identifiers

PMID: PubMed

This identifier is an 8 digit number, and is used in the PubMed database, a well established resource for literature in the database.

Try it!

      29235699 and 25601973

ArXiv ID: arXiv

arXiv is a database of pre-prints (articles just prior to being published), and open-access articles in Physics, Mathematics, Computer Science and Economics.

Give it a try!

         1806.08790v1

Now That You've Built Your Bibliography...

1 of 2Your citation collection (bibliography) has been growing, time now to save it.

In the blue highlighted line below "Bibliography" you can change the format style as you like (or as assigned.)

Using the blue "Copy to Clipboard" drop-down menu, you can save your bibliography to the clipboard, or download and save your bibliography in a variety of formats.

-------

Now That You've Built Your Bibliography...

2 of 2Another option is to use the bottom-most option "Create" to save a copy of your bibliography online for a limited period of time.  Click on the "Create" button, then copy the URL to access your the bibliography later on.  The linked URL will be available for 6 months.

 

Certificate

Please enter your name and email address to retrieve a copy of your completed quiz.

You can enter multiple email addresses separated by commas. If you are doing this for a class, you may need to enter your instructor's email address also.

Feedback

Please email me if you have questions!