 Welcome back! This is the third in a series of videos on Zotero. This video covers backing up and paper writing. If you're going to use Zotero, you will want to make sure the information is safe. Even the most careful internet user can pick up a virus from a web page or an email. Hard drives, age, and crash. So how can you back up your Zotero database? In order to back it up, you must find the Zotero directory. The Zotero directory is hidden and cannot be found using a search of the hard drive. You can find it within Zotero. Open the Zotero panels and find the icon that looks like a gear. This is called the Actions button. When using the Actions button, there is only one button that will usually follow it, which is Preferences. Actions, Preferences. There are tabs across the top of the window. Choose the Advanced tab. Looking at the smaller series of tabs, choose Files and Folders. In the Files and Folders tab, look for the button labeled Show Data Directory and click on it. This is the Zotero directory. It contains all of your citations, all of your full text, all of your notes and tags. To back up your Zotero directory, keep this window open, but close Firefox and the Zotero Preferences window. Next, create a folder on the desktop. Name it Zotero Backup. You may also wish to add the date to the folder's name. Now, return to the Zotero directory. Highlight all the folders and files. Control A is a quick way to highlight everything on the PC. Then copy the files to the backup folder. Make sure to copy not to move the files. When the backup is complete, move the Zotero backup folder off your hard drive. You could move it to Dropbox, Google Drive, a USB drive, or a portable hard drive to name a few. If you do a great deal of work with Zotero, make sure to follow this procedure often. Having done your research with Zotero to help, you are now ready to write your paper. Open up Microsoft Word. You installed the Zotero Word plugin, so you should see the Zotero buttons under the Zotero tab. Older versions have the Zotero buttons under the Add-ins tab. Here are the Zotero buttons. They too can look different depending on the version, but their function is the same. If you are writing your paper and you use a quotation or paraphrase, click on the Zotero's Add Edit Citation button. The first time you click the Add Edit Citation button, Zotero asks you to confirm your preferences for citation style. You can see that there are others, such as MLA and Chicago. I will choose APA. If you know the citation, you could type the name or the words of the title, and matches will come up that you can select. If you don't remember the author, but know it if you see it, you can click the small down arrow and select Classic View. Classic View brings up panels that look similar to the Zotero panels in Firefox. You may select the folder and then the document. Remember that some citation styles will want a page number for the in-text citation. Put in the page number and click OK. Perhaps you have a series of citations you would like to add to support a statement you have made. Click the Add Edit Citation button. Go into Classic View. Click the Multiple Sources button. Select each document, then move it to the rightmost panel using the right arrow. Click OK. When you have finished writing your paper, you will need to create a bibliography. Set up your page, then click Insert Bibliography. You can see that there is much that is right with this APA bibliography. It is double spaced. The entries are in alphabetical order, but there are some problems. Please remember that Zotero is only a piece of software. You will still need to know the rules of your chosen citation style so that you can make corrections. For example, in this bibliography, we can see that several article citations are in title case. Since I chose APA and I know that APA uses sentence case for article titles, I know that there is a problem. But this is a problem that can be corrected in Zotero. In case you do not know, title case would look like this. While the sentence case of the same words would look like this. In APA, article titles are in sentence case rather than title case. In the MLA citation style, it would be reversed, title rather than sentence. Return to Firefox and the Zotero panels. Let's find an article that was captured from the database in title case that we need in sentence case. Find an article in the second panel, then look at the third panel. Right click over the article's title and you will see the option to transform text to the title case or sentence case. I recommend that you go through your folder before you start to write the paper and make sure the case is correct for your citation style. If you need help understanding APA or MLA, please see the library's lib guides for citation styles. From the library's homepage, select library guides, then citing and writing. You see there are guides for both APA and MLA, or you may find copies of the manual at the library's reference desk.