Start right away. The sooner in your research process that you make Zotero part of your routine, the more organized you will be and the easier it will be to keep everything caught up. Don’t wait until you are in the writing phase of your thesis or dissertation to get started.
See the tips below for things you should think about before you fill your Zoteo library with lots of records.
Think about the organization of your library BEFORE you start adding records.
Collections & Tags
Think about how you want to use folders and tags to organize your records before you start adding to your library. That way you can organize items as you add them. See the "Organizing Your Library" tab to learn more.
Attached Files
You might want to set up a cloud-hosted folder in which to store your attachments. It needs to be a space that you can navigate to as a mapped folder on your computer, rather than a browser-based storage space. See the tip for Storing Attachments in the Cloud.
You should choose your citation style early on and familiarize yourself with the style manual.
Clean up citation information as you import records into your library. As you add a record, make sure that you have the proper capitalization and all citation information you need for your citation style.
Enter one record at a time...
While it may seem more time efficient to import a lot of records at once, we recommend adding one at a time. This will make it easier to check and clean up records as they are added. Cleaning up records on entry will save you much more time than making corrections every time you cite a source. This also allows you to evaluate your sources before you import them.
Using Sources in Multiple Languages?