Here you will find all the tools you need to cite your sources properly, information on avoiding plagarism, and a link to RefWorks, which allows you to create a personalized bibliographic database.
Zotero is a free citation management tool that allows you to...
Should I use it?
Organizing and citing sources can be challenging. Zotero can help! Like any tool, it has a learning curve, but it's fairly intuitive and free to use. There is plenty of online documentation, and your librarians can assist you with it, so it may be a good choice for you.
What if my references are already in RefWorks (or another citation management tool)?
It's relatively easy to export your references from another tool, like RefWorks. Again, there is online documentation and your librarians can help.
You can find a comprehensive guide to setting up and using Zotero here.
Take the following online tutorial to learn more about when and why you cite sources.
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Citing Sources: Why & WhenTutorial: Citing Sources Self Assessment: Citing Sources |
Which citation style should you use in your writing? That depends. Some disciplines have a strongly preferred style, while others use a variety of styles, even different ones for specific journals. Your professor is the best source for which style you should use in your academic writing for class. When submitting to a journal or other scholarly publisher, always follow their official author guidelines when selecting a citation style.
This guide covers some of the more common styles, but is not intended to be comprehensive.
If you are writing something substantial, like an honors thesis, capstone paper, dissertation, or for publication, you might benefit from using a tool like Zotero to manage your citations. This will allow you to automate most of the work of formatting citations and references, and make it easy to switch among various styles if necessary. See the Managing Citations & Digital Files tab for details.
The librarians at the Claire T. Carney Library created a comprehensive guide to the most commonly used citation styles, which you can find here.
