Zotero: from zero to hero

As an ex-frontend developr (building websites), I‘m fairly technically-savvy, although I’d never used any reference management software before.

I installed Zotero a few weeks ago, after exploring the joys of publishing my masters reading list in Cardiff Harvard Referencing citation format. Geek out ✌️ 🤓. But what use was Zotero?

My daytime PC runs Linux Mint, and my PDF reader of choice is Okular – lightweight, fast, with ability to highlight text. However, my tablet runs Android, and the choice of PDF readers is peculiarly bad and invasive (Adobe, Foxit etc). It was then that I realised, Zotero handles PDFs! Magnificent, and I can reference, highlight and annotate to my heart’s content.

Screenshot of The Dawn of Everything, annotated in Zotero

This is the use of Zotero.

Addendum

Of course, there are other types items that you can install into your library and collections. They don‘t have to be PDFs, they can be the title (eg of a physical book) and then you can add annotations to that title. I’m guessing you can also add audio, video, images, text files etc.
My masters’ items

And then, for large lumps of text to annotate, you can scan a page of your book as a PDF, import into Zotero and then use the Zotero PDF plugin to transform the PDF into text selectable (you still see the image but also you can copy and past the text).