This is what the Desktop Library looks like. The desktop is divided into three panes. They follow a workflow hierarchy from left-to-right. Any activity in the left pane affects the display of content in the center pane. Furthermore, any activity in the center pane is reflected in the right-hand pane, the document details pane.

The Mendeley Help Guide below will show you how to add, organize, highlight, and cite your documents,as well as find new research.

The left hand pane is your top level library overview. There are a few default folders or collections. These include All Documents, Recently Added, Favorites, Needs Review, My Publications, and Unsorted. You can create your own folders and subfolders. You will also see other options in this panel that relate to groups that you have either created or joined.

You can locate and add more research with Mendeley Desktop using the Literature Search feature to browse Mendeley's crowd-sourced catalog. Additionally, you can use Mendeley Suggest to review recommendations based on your area of study and the contents of your library.

Watch this Mendeley Minute to learn more about organizing your Library

The center pane shows the reference list for whichever folder you selected in the left hand panel. Use the View menu to format your library as a table (Figure A.) or as citations (Figure B).

The right pane displays the Details of the highlighted document in the center pane. You can also add notes to the document for later reference.

When you add a document to your library, Mendeley imports all the relevant data, but sometimes data may be missing. Fortunately, that’s easy to fix. Enter the DOI, PubMed or ArXiv ID and click the magnifying glass to help Mendeley find the right information. Mendeley will then automatically add everything it found.