What is Zotero - TEL Tool for citation and resources

Zotero (pronounced "zoh-TAIR-oh") is a free tool that collects, manages, and cites research sources. 

As with most software, there is a learning curve for reference managers. For small projects, like writing a single paper, you probably can do without one. However, even early on in your career it’s worth it to invest some time exploring their use. Knowing how to use reference managers is an important skill for any researcher. Most reference managers can save you time - quickly save source metadata to your reference manager. - if you cite the same sources multiple times, you only have to check the metadata once. - easily create citations and bibliographies from the sources in your reference manager library. - switch citation styles in your manuscripts with a few clicks. Reduce the amount of errors in your work - take advantage of automatic cite numbering and disambiguation. Keep you organized - easily keep track of hundreds or even thousands of sources - have your reference manager synchronise among your devices - with your source metadata stored in a single location, backing up is easy. Make it easy to collaborate with others - share the metadata of your sources. 

Zotero is easy to use and lives in your web browser where you do your work. Most commonly, Zotero is downloaded as a Firefox extension. 

Zotero can also be used with the Chrome and Safari browsers or used as a standalone tool.  Zotero is, at the most basic level, a citation manager. It is designed to store, manage, and cite bibliographic references, such as books and articles. In Zotero, each of these references constitutes an item.

Zotero allows you to attach PDFs, notes and images to your citations, organize them into easily searchable collections for different projects, and create bibliographies using Word(for Mac or Windows) or OpenOffice using any of over 2800 citation styles. 

References can be added to a Zotero library in many different ways:  directly from databases, journal websites, Google Scholar or the library catalog, by reference file import (for example from an EndNote library), by dragging in PDFs from your hard drive, and by entering them manually. 

I prefer to use Bibtex and found it much cleaner to use in a separate course I attended previously. My happy medium would be learning how to export Zotero into Bibtex to use both. There must be a way though thats for my next challenge. 

Zotero can insert citations and bibliographies into any text field or program. Simply drag-and-drop items, use Quick Copy to send citations to the clipboard, or export them directly to a file.

Video Tour that helped me alot : 

https://www.zotero.org/support/quick_start_guide#video_tour

and saved me from feeling like this.......

I found Zotero not to be the best, however it helps keep me from going insane during the referencing stages of academic assignments: 

Compared to other citation sites: 

Zotero vs. EndNote and Mendeley

Criteria	Zotero	Mendeley	EndNote	EndNote Web
Cost	Free	Free	$105, Student discount through book store	Free to OSU users
Web based?	Yes	Yes, but not primarily	No	Yes
Storage capacity	Unlimited local storage and data syncing; 500MB free Zotero file syncing, if you register with an OSU email address(larger syncing plans available for purchase); or can use WebDav	Unlimited local storage and data syncing; 1GB personal and 100MB shared online space (larger online storage plans available for purchase)	Unlimited local storage	Limited to 10,000 citations
Create group or shared libraries	Yes	Yes, free for up to 3 group members (larger group plans available for purchase)	Yes, with EndNote Web account, but can’t share PDFs with the group	Yes, but can’t share PDFs with the group
Number of Citation Styles	~6400 styles	~6400 styles (uses Zotero’s word processing connections)	~5000	~5000

Zotero has the following important advantages: ( the following points have been taken directly from : http://zotero-manual.github.io/zotero-manual/introduction) 

• free. It’s hard to resist free. Zotero only charges for online file storage. You can sync an unlimited amount of source metadata, and you get 300 MB of free online file storage space (e.g. for PDFs).
• non-profit. Zotero originates at George Mason University, and is mainly financed by academic grants and file storage subscriptions fees. It has a small but sustainable development team, and is governed by the non-profit Corporation for Digital Scholarship. In contrast, many other reference managers are owned by large corporations (such as commercial scientific publishers) whose interests don’t always align with those of the scholarly community.
• open source. Zotero is fully open source, and benefits from all its advantages: if the current developers ever stop working on Zotero, third parties can relatively easily step in. The project attracts power users and developers that contribute bug fixes and new features. You can be sure that Zotero will always be free, and that you will always be able to access your data.
• popular. Zotero is one of the most popular reference managers, and there is a large and vibrant user community.
• active forums. Zotero has busy online forums with first-class support. With developers and power users scattered over the globe, questions are often answered in hours, if not minutes.
• best-in-class citation style support. Zotero was the first product to adopt the Citation Style Language (CSL), which now has become the standard for most newer reference manager software. Most CSL-developers are Zotero users, and the CSL support of Zotero is by far the most thoroughly tested.