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DST88 - Research Guide assignment

Reference Management

Using citation tools will save you the time and effort of manually creating references for your bibliographies.  Quick citation tools are available in many databases, including Search Everything.  You can then copy and paste the citation into your paper quickly and easily.

You can create a quick citation for individual search results, or you can mark and save a batch of records, and create references in the style of your choice before you email or export your results. See the image below for the prompt (red arrows):

 

You may also wish to invest time learning how to use a reference manager - reference managers are software used by many scholars and academics to store citations permanently, and create bibliographies in the style of their choice.  

Two freely available reference managers are Zotero, but there are many others available  - if you write a lot of research papers, need to store your citations permanently for frequent reuse, and want to expedite the process of writing bibliographies, you may wish to learn how to use a reference manager. 

Some questions to consider before choosing a reference manager:

•software needs to work well with the databases you use frequently
•must be able to organize and filter a large number of citations
•Capable of capturing citations on the web
•produce a bibliography in the primary style used in your discipline
•If you're working on a research team, the software has to allow you to collaborate with your colleagues smoothly.
•Open source tools vs. subscription based tools