 Welcome to the first module in our unit on reading and annotating content in Zotero. In this unit, we're going beyond the idea of using Zotero as a citation manager and exploring how it can work for you as a research and a studying partner. We'll start this module with an overview of Zotero's notes feature, but by the end of this unit, you're going to be able to keep your work organized and effective by using Zotero to track everything from simple text notes to detailed quotations and highlights you make while reading PDF versions of articles on tablets. This module covers some of the fundamentals. What a note is in Zotero, how to create notes, and how to edit and format your notes. To follow along in this module, you need to have Zotero installed on your computer. You can get the software at Zotero.org. And for more information on the basics of using Zotero, see our online guide or check out the mastering Zotero guide on GitHub. This module also uses examples from a sample Zotero library. You can use your own Zotero library to try out the features I cover, but I've also made the sample items for this course available for you to import into your own Zotero library. That way you can see exactly what I see and follow along click by click. To learn how to get and import these sample items, see the course setup module and come back to this one when you're ready. Let's get started. A note in Zotero is just a formatted text file that you can store in your library. The formatting is basic, but similar to what you'd use for text styling in software like Microsoft Word. You can create notes as attachments or children to individual Zotero items, or as standalone documents in your Zotero library. There are a couple of ways you can create notes. One is with the notes icon in the Zotero interface. Simply select an item that you want to add a note to. Click the note icon and choose Add Child Note. You can add as many notes as you'd like to an item. You'll see that they appear with a small icon on the left that looks like a little sticky note. Whatever you use as the first line of text in your note will appear here as well, so that's a good way to preview what the note is about. You can also right click on an item and select Add Note to create one. Zotero also supports notes that aren't connected with specific items. These are called standalone notes, and you can also create them using the note icon. When you select a note that you've created, you can see its details in the item pane on the right. You'll see that you have an open text area with a panel of buttons at the top. These are similar to the kinds of formatting options you'll see in Word or online text editors. You can use headings, change the text color, highlight text in different colors, and even add links. At the bottom of the area, you'll see that you can add tags and related items to your notes. If you don't know about those, they're covered in Unit 1 of this course. Finally, at the very bottom, you'll see a button that lets you pop out the note so that you can edit it in a separate window. This is really great for times when you want to create notes without having the whole Zotero software interface in the way. So you can put the little note window next to your browser window, beside your PDF viewer, whatever you'd like. Edits in the note are automatically saved, so when you're done, you can just close the window. So now we know how to create a note and a bit about how to edit them, but what are they for? There are more possibilities than I can think of, but here are some ideas that we'll be exploring in other modules. You can use notes to keep track of key ideas, to create to-do lists, to record quotations of interest. Keep a log of your information searches. You can track your research questions and more. In the next module, I'll provide some specific strategies that will help with your research and your work. In the third unit of this course, our entire focus will be on how notes can be used to support your research workflow.