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many of you have been asking for a video
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explaining how to connect zoto to
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obsidian so in this video I'll be going
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over how to get set up in zoto with the
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better bibtex plugin which allows you to
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do this and generate your Source notes
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by pulling data from
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zoto and making them look real nice and
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clean like this and then they get
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automatically added to the source note
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Hub which is available in my second
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brain Vault you can download it in the
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link in the description and this sorts
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all the source notes by item type so it
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won't pull in everything that you have
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in zoto in your reference manager it
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just pulls in the notes that you
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generate as Source notes from zoto so
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let's dive in and I'll show you exactly
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how to do all this the first thing
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you're going to do is obviously download
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zoto then once it's installed
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it's going to look more like this and
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we'll just click done here and if you
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press command comma to open the settings
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menu same as obsidian you can see that
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there's light and dark mode now so I
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like dark mode I'm a dark mode
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maximalist I'm going to keep it this way
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uh so how do we add references to zoto
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now there's two ways that we can do that
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the first is through zoto you can press
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this uh identifier wand it looks looks
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like and enter the ISBN or the DOI uh
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there's a number of other uh codes that
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you can enter here that I don't know
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about but uh I usually use ISBN or DOI
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so you can add them that way and then if
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zoto does detect that reference material
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it will pull in all the metadata now the
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other way you can do this is by
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downloading the zoto browser connector
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and you can do that through zoto so if
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you go up to
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tools and install browser
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connector it will open up the page for
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you to install this browser extension
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and it's available on Safari Firefox
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Edge Chrome all of the major browsers uh
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you can install the zoto connector so
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you would just press install there I
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already have it set up and what I do is
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I have it pinned to my top bar so I'll
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just show you how this works if I happen
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to come acoss Ross a web article a PDF a
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journal uh even an ebook anything like
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that that I am able to get a digital
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version of uh what I will do is go in my
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browser and click the zoto
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connector and so if you can see it's
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this icon up here and once I click this
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it's going to automatically add it to
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zoto so I clicked it there and now I
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want to actually add some tab tags to
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this because I like to tag all of my
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references so I'm going to click the
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drop down here and now I can place this
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in a different uh Library if I wanted to
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I'm going to keep it in the zoto video
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library but normally I would put this in
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the web articles
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Library uh so I'm going to just add some
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quick tags here we'll say
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PKM personal Knowledge
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Management uh information
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Theory productivity so you get the idea
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you're just going to add bunch of tags
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this is just what I do makes the
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reference material more searchable as
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your library grows so I'll click done
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and now if we go over to zoto you can
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see that it popped it right in there
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automatically and it took a snapshot of
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that article so this is an offline
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snapshot it archived that web page for
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me so I can access this anywhere now if
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I click this it'll open it in zoto
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and this is a local file so I can do
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whatever I want with this it's frozen in
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time and I'll never lose this reference
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material this is why I use a reference
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manager and not a readit later app so I
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can consume this Source in zoto now I
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don't have to go back to my web browser
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but I'll show you another thing that you
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can do if you wanted to make this more
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readable let's say it's on a website
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like the New York Times that has all
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these ads all over the place and you
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don't want to Archive the page that way
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so what I would do is I use this other
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extension that's called reader View and
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this is a free browser extension I just
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click this and it will make a readable
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form of this article and now this is
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more printable it's more legible and
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what I can do is even change the font if
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I wanted
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to and change the theme as well so I can
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just kind of pick a theme that I want to
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use to freeze this article in time and
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archive it in my reference manager so
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let's say I like this one so what I'll
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do is press command P to print this and
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make sure that it's selected as save as
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PDF and then we're going to save that
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and I'll save it to my
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desktop now if I go back to
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zoto and I go
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to this reference that I just captured
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I can go over to the right side menu and
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press this paperclip here for
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attachments going to click add and file
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and then here is the printable PDF that
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I just downloaded and we're going to
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open that and now I have a more reader
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friendly version of this archived and
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you can do all of your highlighting in
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here there's different highlighting
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Styles there's
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underlines uh you can draw on it so all
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kinds of stuff you can do that is all
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built into zoto now which is really
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great and if you want to delete it you
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just select it and delete so let's close
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out of there so now the question is how
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do we connect this all to obsidian well
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the first thing we're going to do is
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download the better bibtex plugin for
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zoto I will leave a link to this in the
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description but you're going to go to
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the download link here and this will
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take you to the latest update on their
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GitHub page this is a very active
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project they're constantly pushing
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updates and even just after zoto 7
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released the other day they had an
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updated better bibtex plugin because
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what happened was the previous version
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broke in the zoto 7 update so the better
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bib Tex team quickly released an update
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and it's all working back to normal now
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so you're going to download the xpi file
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here we'll just click that and it
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download it already it's a very quick
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download and we're going to go back to
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zoto here go to tools
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plugins and you're going to click this
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gear at the top right and install plugin
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from file then select the xpi file you
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just downloaded click
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open and there's better bib Tex so
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that's all set up you may have to
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restart the application I'm not sure but
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this looks like it's all connected and
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ready to go and as you can see it now
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has a field for citation key now if you
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don't have this displaying what you
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would do is rightclick the menu here on
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the top where it has all the different
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fields and you would click citation key
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so you want to make sure that you have
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citation key displayed as a field here
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and the reason for this is this is how
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we're going to name our source notes and
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refer back to the reference in zoto so
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this is not a complete citation key
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because I'm missing the author name so
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sometimes when you pull in an article
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into zoto it doesn't have all the
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metadata and you need to manually add it
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yourself and the way that my bib Keys
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get titled is by author last name and
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then year of the publication so I need
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the author's name in this article and I
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don't know what that is so we have to go
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back to the article and see what his
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name name is it's Sebastian gsky I'm
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just going to copy this so I don't
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misspell it and I'll paste it in here
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there's gebski
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and Sebastian so now it's properly cited
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and we've got the citation key as you
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can see it's r. gebski
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2019 that's exactly how I want it now
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the reason I use r dot is that it's
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telling me that this is a reference in
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zoto because I'm linking my sources all
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over the place I have an analog note box
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uh I'm referencing material in my pocket
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notebook and in obsidian so I'm cross
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referencing my source material all over
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the place and by having the r dot it's
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telling me that this is a reference that
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I've captured in zoto so uh you don't
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have to have this this is just how I do
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it and I'll just show you real quick how
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I have that added uh you're just going
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to go to the settings so we're going to
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press command comma again and a great
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feature of the new version of zoto is
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that it's added a menu in the main menu
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for your plugins so this is a really
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great addition um you don't have to go
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to the separate menu anymore uh but this
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is where I have the custom formula for
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my site key so I'll also include this in
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the description um so you don't have to
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go through and pause the video and all
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that but uh this is the formula I use
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and if you wanted to remove the r dot if
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that doesn't make sense to you you just
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go like that and keep it as author
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year so we'll close out of here now that
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you have better bib deex connected let's
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go into obsidian and get this all
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synchronized so I have this all
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preconfigured in my obsidian Vault that
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you can download in the link in the
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description but if you want to do this
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on your own you're just going to press
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command comma to pull up the menu and we
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want to install a community plugin
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that's called zoto integration now I
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already have this installed there is an
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update it looks like so let's just
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update this real quick and as you can
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see this is telling you that it requires
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the better bib Tex plugin so we just
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installed that and we're good to go now
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that this is installed all we have to do
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is go over to the zoto integration
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settings and you're going to want to
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include a Loc that you're importing your
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Source notes to all of my source
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material goes to the same folder because
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I'm organizing it with this here in case
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I need to navigate uh the source
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material I'll do it this way um you can
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also just search for it in obsidian as
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well so I keep that all in the same
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folder I don't get into all the folder
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hierarchies with the different types of
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sources uh I also like to have this
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option toggled on here because it will
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automatically open the source note as
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soon as you generate it and we also want
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to so we also want to select a citation
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format uh this may not be showing on
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your menu if it's if you've just
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installed the plugin so you want to add
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citation format this way I use Chicago
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17th Edition you can use whatever you
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want but you want to make sure that
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you're consistent with zoto because zoto
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also has a citation
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manager and you want to make sure that
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you're using the same style so so that
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way when you generate bibliographies
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from zoto it's consistent with the
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citation format in obsidian and I'll
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show you what I mean by that so if I
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wanted to grab this citation I can just
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rightclick and select this option here
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that says create bibliography from
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item and you can select your citation
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style here but if you have it selected
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in the settings it will pre-select your
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preferred citation style so I just go
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ahead and click okay and now it's on my
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clipboard and if I go into
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obsidian and let's say this is at the
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bottom of a main note I would just press
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command V and that's pasted in uh
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formatted and cited exactly how it is in
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zoto so we'll just get rid of that and
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let's go back to the the zoto menu here
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and just see what else we need so this
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is the import format now this is saying
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how do you want your Source notes to be
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titled where do you want them to go
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where should the images be stored when
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you pull in your reference material if
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you're doing that and what kind of
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template are you using and this is
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basically the command that you're going
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to use to create a source note so I just
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named mine add Source note and then the
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output path is going going into zc/
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sourc notes SL site key so it's just
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being named after the site key exactly
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how it is in zoto and it's not named
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after the article titles the reason for
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that is because when you start naming
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your Source notes after the article
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titles it's going to become very
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difficult to discern as your knowledge
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base grows the difference between a
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source note and a main note so if I
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titled my main note something that's
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similar to the tit of an article in my
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reference manager it's going to cause
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some confusion when I go to search for
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that material in obsidian um but let's
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just continue on here so now the other
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thing is you'll need a zoto template in
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obsidian so this is another thing that
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I've included in My Vault I spent a lot
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of work formatting my zoto template so
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that it's consistent with the way that
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I'm pulling in all of my source material
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and so this is where you would select
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that template file then again you're
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going to select your bibliography style
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and that should be it as far as the
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settings go now let me just minimize
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this window here because it's going to
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pull up an overlay so now if I press
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command shift L it's going to open a
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zoto search bar and I can just type in
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the reference material I'm looking for
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so that one is already selected in this
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case because it knows it's the most
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recent capture that I have in zoto and
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and then I just press enter so now it's
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in there and I press enter
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again and we've got ourselves a source
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note so let's look at what this looks
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like here now the first thing you'll
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notice is there's a link what does this
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do if we click this it's going to open
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the link in zoto to this file so it just
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highlighted it here and it's pointing me
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directly to to this Source material so
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this is what I mean by we're leaving a
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paper trail directly back to the source
00:15:35
material with our source notes and so
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there's also a place here for metadata
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now this is just going to pull in
00:15:43
whatever metadata is available in zoto
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so if you have a lot of metadata in your
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reference in zoto it's going to populate
00:15:51
all of that so in this case it's really
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only five properties that it's populated
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uh which is fine this is the bare
00:15:58
minimum of what would need in obsidian
00:16:01
so I also include a field here for
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selection intent and this is to Define
00:16:06
what it is that I intend to do with this
00:16:08
Source material how does this relate to
00:16:10
my creative goals what do I plan to do
00:16:12
with this is this going to be published
00:16:15
is this something for uh academic work
00:16:18
what is the intent in selecting this
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material among all of the other material
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I could have been bringing into my
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knowledge base so then this is where you
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write your Source notes the way that I
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do this and the traditional zle Casten
00:16:33
way to do this is to start with the page
00:16:35
number so if you're reading a book uh a
00:16:38
PDF that has page numbers you would add
00:16:40
that here uh I just simply type the
00:16:43
number like this and then the note that
00:16:46
way and then you just keep going 29
00:16:49
here's the note
00:16:51
32 and then this might be a
00:16:57
link this is a
00:17:00
linked note so just like that that's all
00:17:04
there is to it to writing Source notes
00:17:06
you're just making these quick jots of
00:17:08
key terms and ideas that you can
00:17:10
reference back to later so that's
00:17:13
basically all there is to writing a
00:17:16
source note so the other thing that this
00:17:17
is doing is if I go over to my source
00:17:20
note Hub I can now see that at the top
00:17:24
of this table here is my latest Source
00:17:28
note so this gives me a bird's eye view
00:17:30
of all my reference material as I write
00:17:33
Source notes in obsidian with it and if
00:17:36
I go to web articles it's also in there
00:17:39
because this is a web article and if I
00:17:42
go to books it's not listed here because
00:17:44
it's not a book uh so this is displaying
00:17:47
all of my source notes as the item type
00:17:50
so that's about it that's all you need
00:17:52
to do to get zoto connected to obsidian
00:17:56
and if this video was helpful to you
00:17:58
please give give it a like And subscribe
00:18:00
to the channel for more on how to think
00:18:02
better learn faster and create value in
00:18:04
the digital age so thanks for watching
00:18:07
and I'll see you in the next one
