Groups allow you to share citations and files with other people. You can create a public group that allows you to share all your citations with anyone or you can create a private group that allow you to share the citation and files with your group. With a private group you also have the capability to annotate documents in one space where everyone can review those notes and create citations for a group project in one document.
An example of when a public group might be useful is if you are doing a presentation at a conference or in class and want your bibliography to be easily accessible to everyone. You can create a group and just share the URL.
To create a group you must be in Zotero Online. Groups can be accessed and added through the desktop component, but they cannot be created here.
After you create the group, you can invite members by clicking on Manage Members.
Once in Manage Members you can Send More Invitations and/or Update Roles of other members.
Note: All group members will need to sync their Zotero accounts before they see the group in their Zotero library.
When you are working on a group project and more than one person needs to be able to add and/or edit citations you want to make sure you are putting the record in the document from the correct Group Library.
If you have a Group Library in Zotero, when you click Add/Edit citation in your document and search your library you will find there are options listed underneath the Group Library. You always want to select the resource from the Group Library. If you don't select this option then others in the Group won't be able to add or edit because the code will be broken.
When you are in the list of citations you can link to a Group Library option will be in grey and anything under that will be pulled from the Group Library instead of your personal library.