Zotero
For quick reference, the class Zotero group can be found here: https://www.zotero.org/groups/5073505/historical_games_studies
Zotero is, as they describe themselves, "Your personal research assistant. Zotero is a free, easy-to-use tool to help you collect, organize, cite, and share research." It is an open source tool developed by an independent, nonprofit organization (i.e. it doesn't want to monetize your information).
Essentially, Zotero is software that allows you to keep track of your research. It tracks bibliographic information (metadata) for resources, articles and books you read, and you can use it to organize and keep copies of pdfs or websites on your computer (or accessible online too). Zotero can also be used with word processors, such as Word or Google Docs to automatically (well, sort of automatically) format footnotes, endnotes, and bibliography. If you want to change a reference from Chicago or Turabian style to MLA, you can do that (almost) with a click of a button.
Zotero can take a bit of time to get used to, but if you regularly use it, Zotero will help you a lot in this course and in the long term. Instead of having to remember links or how you did that google scholar search, you just click a button and it adds info (and often pdf's themselves) into a database you can easily search.
How to install Zotero
You will need to register for a free account here.
You will need to download the free software here and install the software on your computer. Zotero works best if you also install the plugin on your internet browser, to enable you to add content to your repository with a single click.
If you have problems installing it, consult the Zotero website here.
You could join the Zotero group for the class, which allows us to organize content as a group. The group can be found here, but I need to invite everyone, which I will do when it seems useful for us to start to use (likely week three).
Zotero is something that you can use at many different levels of increasing complexity. I'll show you the basics and how to use it with Obsidian (optional).
UCLA libraries has a well-written tutorial about how to install and use Zotero effectively. I strongly suggest you check it out first.
For help adding resources to Zotero, see here. Carleton has a short userguide here (pdf).
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