This is a work in progress on a guide to entering information into Zotero manually.
The following fields exist across multiple item types and have the same purpose for all types
| Field | Description |
|---|---|
| Abstract | Short description of the work |
| Accessed | Date an electronic resource was accessed. Typically filled automatically. Accepts various date formats, including “today,” “yesterday,” and “tomorrow” |
| Archive | Mainly for archival resources, the archive where an item was found. Note that Zotero's ability to fully cite archival resources are limited, see here for some pointers. |
| Call Number | The call number of an item in a library |
| Cast Member* | Member of the cast of a performance |
| Date | Date of publication. See “Accessed” for data entry |
| DOI | The Digital Object Identifier of an item. This field will be added to more item types in the future]] |
| Edition | The edition of a work. Where numeric, should be entered as simple arabic numeral, e.g. “2” rather than “second” |
| Episode Number | The Episode Number of a pdocast, or TV/radio broadcast |
| Extra | Free field. Currently used for storing PMID and PMCID. Note these have to be on separate lines to be usable in citations. |
| Format | The format of an audio or video recording (e.g. “DVD,” “CD,” “MP3,” etc.) |
| History | Resources related to the procedural history of a legal case or legislation |
| ISBN | The International Standard Book Number of a book or similar publication |
| ISSN | The International Standard Serial Number of a periodical publiaction |
| Issue | The issue number of a periodical - typically issues start at 1 at the beginning of each year/volume |
| Language | The language of publication for an item. We recommend storing these as two letter ISO language codes followed by two letter ISO country codes, e.g. en-US for American English, or de-DE for German. Note that this also serves to disable title-casing of non-English publications. |
| Legislative Body* | The legislative body - parliament, senate etc. - debating a bill or passing legislation |
| Library Catalog | The catalog or database an item was imported from. Used e.g. in the MLA citation style. This is much broader than actual library catalogs and may be renamed in the future |
| Loc. in Archive | The location of an item in an archive, such as a box and folder number or other relevant location information from the finding aid |
| Network | The Network broadcasting a TV or Radio show |
| Pages | The page range of an item that is part of a larger publication. Also to be used for locators in e-journals |
| Place | Mostly place of publication for an item. Can also refer to location of an event. Zotero will eventually add separate place fields for those two cases. |
| Program Title | The title of a radio of TV show of which an episode is entered. E.g. “This American Life” or “60 Minutes” |
| Publication | The title of the periodical containing the cited item |
| Publisher | The publisher of an item |
| Rights* | The copyright terms or license for an item |
| Running Time | The running time of any type of recording. Needs to contain the unite, i.e. 120mins |
| Section | Section of a bill, statute, or a newspaper |
| Series | Name of a series that contains multiple publications (e.g. “Cambridge Studies in Comparative Politics”) |
| Series Number | The number of an item in a series |
| Series Title | Title of a series of articles within one issue of a journal. See here for an explanation. For citation purposes this is currently equivalent to “Series” and is erroneously used instead of series in some item types (e.g. Map) |
| Session | The session of a legislative body |
| Short Title | Short form of the title, often without the subtitle. Used mostly in footnote styles for subsequent citations |
| Title | The principal title of an item. Should be entered in sentence case |
| Type | Description of an item, such as “Ph.D. Thesis,” “Unpublished manuscript,” or “Poster” |
| URL | URL (web-address) at which the full item was accessed. Should not be used for links to catalog records or abstracts, which can be added as links |
| Volume | volume of a (typically multi-volume) publication. Will most commonly be a number |
| Website Type | Rarely used - describes the genre of a webpage such as “personal blog” or “intranet” |
Fields marked with an asterisk (*) cannot be used in citations