University of Bamberg
open search form
You are here

Service Institutions

University Library

  1.  University of bamberg
  2. Administration and Institutions
  3. Service Institutions
  4. University Library
  5. Reference Management

Reference Management

Colourbox.de
[Translate to English:] Literaturverwaltungsprogramme helfen, den Überblick zu bewahren

Scientific work largely consists of working with texts. Reference management programmes help you to keep track of the publications you have read and still need to read. You can save references with the corresponding PDF files, structure references with tags and record citations and notes on the texts.

When writing, you can use a reference management programme to insert uniformly formatted references. The programme automatically creates a bibliography from the cited publications, which you can adapt to the specifications at your department with just a few clicks.

If you have any questions about reference management, please contact literaturverwaltung.ub(at)uni-bamberg.de or make an appointment with our Book-A-Librarian services.

Reference Management Using Zotero

Zotero-Logo

Zotero is a platform-independent software for reference management and knowledge organisation.

Zotero is installed in all PC pools at the University of Bamberg and available for employees' Windows computers in the Software Centre. Students and users of other operating systems can download and install Zotero from the publisher's website. Note: To update Zotero, you need the same user rights as for the installation. To enable automatic updates, install it as a normal user (click away the admin login window) on your personal device.

In order to synchronise your bibliographic database between devices and to be able to work on it in a team, you need to create a free Zotero account (Terms of sercive, Privacy policy). This is possible with any email address. If you only want to work locally, a Zotero account is not required.

There are numerous plugins to extend the functions of Zotero. The plugin for your word processing programme (Microsoft Word, LibreOffice, GoogleDocs) is automatically installed. For LaTeX, we recommend the Better BibTeX plugin.

Please also install the browser add-on Zotero Connector to save references and PDF documents directly from the browser to Zotero.

By default, Zotero stores bibliographic data and the associated PDFs in a local folder. We recommend using the IT-Service's file server (= network drive) for this purpose, so that you do not have to worry about backups of your bibliographic data.

Optionally, you can set up a free Zotero account to synchronise your literature data between different devices. This will require you to accept Zotero's privacy policy. With a Zotero account, you can decide whether you want to upload and synchronise the associated full texts in addition to the bibliographic data.

The University of Bamberg provides its members with unlimited Zotero storage space for this purpose. To claim this, you must add your university email address (...@uni-bamberg.de or ...@stud.uni-bamberg.de) in your account settings. You can create the account itself with a different email address.

Zotero-Einstellungen: Hinzufügen einer weiteren E-Mail-Adresse

We regularly offer Zotero courses for beginners and advanced users (usually in German). Current dates can be found in the Virtual Campus.

 

Zotero provides a documentation and a helpful discussion board.


You can contact the University Library's reference management team at literaturverwaltung.ub(at)uni-bamberg.de or 0951/863-1666. If you have technical problems with Zotero, please contact IT Support.

For students and staff who have already had experience with the use of reference management programmes, the University Library provides assistance with individual questions and problems.

For example, we can help you...

•        when switching from Citavi to Zotero,
•        with complex citations,
•        in special cases of literature import and export,
•        optimising knowledge organisation.


Arrange an appointment

Other Reference Management Programmes

The Bamberg University Library supports you in using the reference management programme Zotero and in switching from Citavi to Zotero. There is a video tutorial (7 minutes; German) on moving Citavi projects to Zotero.

There are many different reference management programmes that differ in their detailed functions. In addition to the Zotero courses at the University Library, the WIAI student council offers introductions to literature management with JabRef. Detailed software comparisons can be found here (German):