Installing and Configuring Zotero

1. Go to https://www.zotero.org and install Zotero and the Zotero Connector for the browser you use

2. When prompted, set up a free Zotero account

3. In Zotero, go to the  edit menu then preferences. Select the citation tab, and choose Chicago Manual of Style, 17th edition, full not

Before Working

• When starting work a different set, delete whatever is leftover from your last set from Zotero and make sure it has no content in it.

Google Alerts

• Copy and paste the email contents into a Word document

• Find each title given in all of the UMBC emails, and remove all duplicate entries.

If there is a limitation on what you’re supposed to process

• If you're working on an update, delete everything you don't have to process.

• If you're working on new work and have to park some of it:

  • Cut and paste everything that you’re not supposed to process into another Word file,

  • Give both files appropriate names

  • Post a task for Michelle in Workast to “Park” the portion of the work that you’re not supposed to process. Attach the file with the work you’re not supposed to process to the task. Give it the tag "Works to be parked."

  • Attach the file that you’ll be processing to the existing processing task.

Determine if the Work is Out of Scope

CV's, Obituaries, Patents, Abstracts with no Full Text, Theses and Dissertations

Strike these out and do no processing:

• CV

• Patent Application

• Abstract with no full text document—if it’s more than a paragraph, and doesn’t say it’s an abstract, it’s not one

• Obituary unless the subject is a UMBC person

• Description only of a grant funded project.

• Theses or Dissertations:

  • Generally, if the item is a master thesis or PhD dissertation, or says Proquest Dissertation Publishing, we don't add manually–cross it off on the print-out.  UMBC thesis and dissertations are automatically sent to UMBC by Proquest and batch loaded, so don't add to a spreadsheet.

  • EXCEPTION: We don't receive any senior theses from Proquest, so these should be added to the spreadsheet and manually loaded.  Other institutions' master theses or PhD dissertations are out of scope. 

About UMBC or an Author Affiliated with UMBC

• There must be a UMBC author or alternately, the item must be about UMBC, a UMBC department, or person affiliated with UMBC. Often, the authors’ affiliation is included on the item. If not, use the UMBC directory, here, http://www.umbc.edu/search/directory// to determine. If there is no UMBC author, and the subject is not UMBC, a UMBC department, or person, it's out of scope–strike out and do no processing

Identifying Federal Government Documents and Works on CC licenses

1. Find the publisher’s record for the item that you’re processing

2. Determine if the work is a federal government document

   1. Check if the publisher is a U.S. government department or agency. Check if any authors’ affiliations are a U.S. government department or agency

      1. Federal government agencies often have U.S. or national in their name, e.g. U.S. Department of Energy, National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). They can also be identified by a .gov URL (see exceptions below). Sometimes, you simply have to know that it's a federal government agency, e.g. Smithsonian Institution, Los Alamos National Laboratory. 

      2. Some common government agencies that we encounter are:

         1. NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, U.S. Department of Commerce)

         2. The National Weather Service

         3. NASA Goddard Flight Center and any other NASA (National Aeronatics and Space Adminstration) agencies

         4. Army Research Labs

         5. Navy Research Labs

         6. NIST (National Institute of Standards and Technology, U.S. Department of Commerce)

         7. CDC (Center for Disease Control and Prevention) and any CDC department or divisions

         8. Los Alamos and other National Laboratories

         9. Smithsonian Institute

      3. If you're not sure if a publisher is a U.S. federal government agency, google and look for the .gov in the URL. If the .gov is in the URL, it's a U.S. federal government agency.

      4. The U.S. government is notthe publisher of works on ERIC, eric.edu.gov, (works on education), Medline/PubMed, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/  (medical works), and the NASA Technical Report Server, https://www.sti.nasa.gov/  (NASA Publications and NASA employee publications), except for works on the NASA Technical Report Server where another publisher isn't given in the record for the item

      5. City, state, and county publications are not U.S. Federal Government publications.

   2. Find the authors affiliated with federal government agencies. At least one must be only affiliated with a government agency.

3. If either publisher is a federal government agency, or an author is only affiliated with a U.S. government department or agency, it’s a federal government document.

4. If the work isn’t a federal government document, look for a creative commons license on the work

Processing Federal Government Documents and Works on CC licenses

5. Use the publisher’s record to add to Zotero. If unpublished, use the record where the work appears. When on the correct record, go to extension, and Zotero, and a pop up will appear that you can use to download the work and it’s metadata to Zotero. 

6. Record Zot on the Word document.

7. If the info loaded into Zotero seems minimal, check that the title, authors and URL have been added to Zotero. If not, add them manually, or add the work using a regular spreadsheet that will be input manually.

8. Copy the citation using “copy bibliography”

9. Change the format to journal articles.

10. Paste the citation into Journal Abbr

11. If the work is a fed gov doc, copy and paste this rights note into the ISSN: “This work was written as part of one of the author's official duties as an Employee of the United States Government and is therefore a work of the United States Government. In accordance with 17 U.S.C. 105, no copyright protection is available for such works under U.S. Law.”

12. If the work is on a CC License, copy and paste the name of the CC license into the ISSN

13. If the URL is the DOI, change it to the URL

14. Add any necessary notes--repeating the notation on the Word doc is no longer required unless you need the info when fulling in the spreadsheet (like link only)

15. Delete any extra notes that Zotero created when adding the record