Installing updates
Hi. I work in an organisation where only the IT services have the administrator rights to install the Zotero updates. Now, they don't want to install them every time, saying there is too many and it's a waste of their time. Should I worry? If they install them every other time, will there be stuff missing? Thanks!
Though they probably wouldn't want you to, and there might be system policies to prevent it, on Windows, you can try to use this link to download a ZIP version of Zotero instead of an installer and keep that within your home directory, allowing it to update itself. (File associations for various file types — .bib, .ris, .csl — won't be registered properly, but you can set those manually.)
On macOS, you could install the app within an "Applications" folder in your home directory instead of /Applications.
Zotero is updated regularly with new features and bug fixes, and we strongly recommend staying up to date, though the most time-sensitive changes — translator fixes to keep Zotero saving from websites even as they change — are deployed automatically to existing installs separately from version upgrades. You can always review the version history for a full list of changes and decide how time-sensitive an update is for you personally.
The ZIP will just extract the Zotero program files into a folder on your disk, which you can run from anywhere (again, assuming no system restrictions on that).