Reference Management Software: Home

Properly citing your sources and creating bibliographies is very hard work. There are several different styles and you may be required to use more than one, depending on what course you're taking. The style manuals are long and complicated, and can be difficult to use.

Help is available! There are several very good reference management software products available, which do most of the hard work for you. The basic bibliographic information is entered into fields (sometimes with just one mouse click!), and then you tell the software which bibliographic format you want to use. It takes the basic information you've entered, and creates properly-formated citations and bibliographies in any of the major styles.

The information below will help you learn more about some of the available products.

Remember that even the best reference management software is no substitute for the actual handbooks themselves. You should always check the citations and bibliographies created by them against the appropriate handbook to ensure accuracy.

Microsoft Word

Recent versions of Microsoft Word include reference management software in the "References" tab.

• Create individual reference entries for your bibliography
• Insert citations into the text of your Word document
• Generate a completed references page and manage it accordingly
• Insert endnotes and footnotes
• Tutorials are available through Microsoft Office's website and are easily searchable on Youtube as well

Database Citation Generators

EBSCOhost and other databases often allow you to generate citations for items you find there. You can either copy and paste them into your document or even export them to whatever reference management software you prefer to use. Tutorials and FAQs for these features can be found easily via the Help sections on the database websites, or through a well-crafted web search. For convenience sake, we have linked you to the EBSCO cite feature page above.

Zotero  

Zotero is an excellent free reference management tool, and is available for Windows, Mac, and Linux operating systems. For full functionality, you should download the Zotero software along with a connector for your preferred browser. We also recommend that you download one of the Zotero word processor plug-ins, which allows you to create references and bibliographies on the fly within your word processor program.

Mendeley

Mendeley allows you to manage PDF downloads, properly format citations and bibliographies, and collaborate with others in your research.

Endnote

Endnote offers a free version that includes:

• Store up to 50,000 references
• 20  bibliographic styles
• 2GB of files storage
• Webpage reference capture