In many cases, Zotero's basic search and sorting features are enough to quickly find the items in your collections. However, as your collection grows, you will need a more powerful and fine-grained tool. This is where Zotero's advanced search functionality becomes particularly useful. Advanced searches allow you to make specific queries on individual facets of your collection. Beyond simply helping you find things, advanced searches can also function as a crucial component in shaping your research process.
Setting Up an Advanced Search
To launch the advanced search window, click on the magnifying glass icon (
).
You will then see the advanced search window.
For our first search we will be primarily concerned with setting search criteria in the center of the window. See the image below.
From the first drop down menu, on the left, you can set the field you want to search through. In the text field on the left you can enter the term you want to search for. Then, you now you want to search through the field on the left for the term on the right. For example, if you set your search to “Title”, “contains”, “Shakespeare” and click search you will only see the items in your collection that have Shakespeare in their titles. If you changed the search to be “Title” “does not contain” “Shakespeare” and click search you will see all of the items that do not have the word Shakespeare in their titles.
You can then add additional criteria to your search. If you click the plus sign on the right side of the Advanced Search window you will add another row to your search. You can add as many criteria as you like. For example if we take the “Title” “contains” “Shakespeare” search and add “Date” “is before” “1950” and click search we will now only see items from our collection that contain Shakespeare in their titles and were published before 1950.
Saving Searches
When you save an advanced search, you save the criteria for the search, not the individual items you found through that search. This means that beyond using advanced searches to find things, you can use them as the fundamental organizing structure of your library. By setting up several key advanced searches it is possible to automatically sort your collections by the criteria relevant to your particular research project.
The first step to working with saved searches is to click the save search button in the advanced search window. You will then be prompted to name the search. Once you have given the search a appropriate name and click OK you will see your saved search appear at the bottom of your left column with the saved search icon (
).
Let's use our earlier example to see how a saved search works. If today there are seven items that fit the search for Shakespeare in titles of works published before 1950, and I decided to save that search, all seven of those items would be in the saved search collection. Now, if over the next week I add five other items that matched those criteria to my Zotero collection they would automatically appear in my saved search as well.