Interacting with your sources helps you engage with them in a meaningful, transformative way. Zotero is one example of a free software tool that helps organize, cite, and otherwise manage sources.

There's a lot going on in this screenshot, which contains the group Zotero accounts of several OSU librarians. Every item listed on the right division of the screenshot is an article, web page, or other source that the librarians have gathered on regulating artificial intelligence.

Here are a few specific areas to examine:

Notice how the broad topic of generative artificial intelligence in higher education contains sub-folders. Each sub-folder is focused on a different aspect of artificial intelligence (for example, ethics, AI literacy, and government regulation). These sub-folders allow researchers to visually group related sources.
Notice how each research topic has its own folder. Researchers working on multiple projects can keep track of all of their course readings and articles.
Notice the list of tags in the lower left section of the screenshot, which include "ChatGPT", "Computer science", and "Policy". Researchers are able to sort their sources by their tags to quickly group information by topic. Do you want all of the computer science articles that you've gathered about AI? You can do that. How about all of the articles about ChatGPT and policy? You can do that, too!

You can also use Zotero to view PDF files and other information sources.

A screenshot of an academic article. One of the phrases in the article is highlighted to demonstrate Zotero's highlight feature. The highlighted text also includes a comment, which indicates how students can comment on articles using Zotero.

This is a PDF copy of an article that I'm viewing in Zotero. By switching to that tab, I'm able to highlight the PDF and annotate it with notes that I can return to later for discussion or research synthesis.

You can also use Zotero to generate citations and bibliographies based on your accumulated sources. In this screenshot, I'm creating APA, 7th ed. citations for eight sources.

A screenshot of Zotero's Create Citation/Bibliography window. Users are able to select which citation style they want Zotero to generate, as well as an output method.

Be sure to check your citations against a guide like the MLA Handbook, the Purdue OWL's APA Style & Formatting Guide, or the Chicago Manual of Style. If Zotero can't extract the correct authors or article type from your source, it won't provide an accurate citation.

The OSU Libraries Zotero guide has information on all of these topics, including information on downloading and installing Zotero, video tutorials, and workshop dates.