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Connect Zotero and your entire reference collection becomes searchable in Anara alongside any PDFs you have uploaded directly. Ask questions across the whole library at once. For researchers who manage their references in Zotero and want to stop switching between tools to find the paper they need.

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1. Describe the task

You have been building your Zotero library for years. Hundreds of papers, organized into collections, annotated with notes. Every time you start working in Anara, you end up uploading individual PDFs from folders you already have in Zotero because there was no other way to bring the two together. The result is two partially overlapping libraries and constant uncertainty about which one has the version you actually want. The Zotero connector imports your reference collections directly into Anara. Connect via OAuth, select the collections you want to bring in, approve the import, and your Zotero library becomes searchable in Anara alongside anything else you have uploaded. From that point, one question can reach across everything you have. Here a PhD student in organizational behavior has three years of Zotero references on leadership, organizational learning, and identity theory, all organized into collections, and wants to use Anara to search across them without uploading papers individually. 
I have just connected my Zotero library. My main research collection is called "Organizational Learning" and has 140 papers across subcollections on absorptive capacity, dynamic capabilities, and institutional theory.

Bring in all three subcollections and create a folder in my Anara library that mirrors the structure. Then tell me: across these papers, what are the three most contested theoretical claims and which papers represent each side of the debate?

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2. Give Anara context

Required context
  • A Zotero account connected to Anara via OAuth. If it is not yet connected, Anara will guide you to connect it when you ask.
  • The collection name or names you want to import.
Optional context
  • Your research question or the argument you are currently developing. Helps Anara focus the first synthesis rather than producing a general overview of the whole import.

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3. What Anara creates

An Anara library folder matching the structure of your Zotero collection, with your papers imported and available for search, citation, and synthesis. The import confirmation shows you what was brought in and flags any papers where the metadata was too sparse to import cleanly. From there, every library workflow in Anara becomes available across your Zotero collection: cross-library search, claim verification, literature review drafting, citation generation.

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4. Follow-up prompts

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Search the imported collection for a specific argument

Once the library is populated, start working with it immediately. 
Search my Organizational Learning folder for papers that argue absorptive capacity is primarily a routines-based process rather than a cognitive one. Show me the relevant passages with citations.

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Generate a reference list from the imported papers

When you need formatted citations from what you have just brought in. 
Generate APA 7 citations for all papers in the Dynamic Capabilities subcollection. Return them in alphabetical order.

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Add new papers that came out since the sync

When your Zotero collection has grown after the initial import and you want to update Anara. 
I have added 15 new papers to my Zotero "Organizational Learning" collection since I last synced. Import them into the same folder in my Anara library and tell me which new topics they cover that were not well represented in the original set.

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5. Tricks, tips, and troubleshooting

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How you word your prompt shapes what you get

When connecting Zotero for the first time, name the collection explicitly rather than asking Anara to “import everything.” Large libraries can take time to import, and importing a focused collection first lets you test the workflow before committing to the full set. After the import, treat the collection the same as any library folder: use folder-scoped search to keep queries focused, especially if you have multiple research projects running in parallel.

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Check the output against your own understanding

The Zotero sync is a one-time snapshot, not a live connection. If you add papers to Zotero after syncing, they do not appear in Anara automatically. Re-import the collection to update the Anara library. This also means that papers deleted from Zotero are not removed from Anara. If your Zotero organization changes significantly, it is faster to re-import the affected collections than to move files manually in Anara. Also note: Zotero folder hierarchy from parent and child collections may not fully transfer as nested folders, so check the structure after import and reorganize in Anara if needed.

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What to do with the output next

Once the import is complete, run a cross-library search to confirm Anara can find passages across your papers as expected. A good first test: ask Anara to locate a specific argument you know is in one of the imported papers, then check whether the passage citation takes you to the right document. If the citation resolves correctly, the import is working. If not, check whether that paper was imported with full text or abstract only. Abstract-only imports support metadata but not passage-level search or citation.