What is citation management?

Citation management is a great way to stay organized during the research and writing process. There are various free and subscription based tools created specifically to help you:

-Keep track of research materials
-Store sources in one place
-Make inserting citations into your paper easier
-Make creating your final bibliography easier

The library recommends Zotero, a free tool that you can add-on to your Firefox web browser, "to help you collect, manage, and cite your research sources." For more information and to get started using this citation manager visit Zotero's Quick Start Guide at: http://www.zotero.org/support/quick_start_guide. A librarian at Georgia State University also created a great tutorial on how to use Zotero, which you can check out here: http://research.library.gsu.edu/zotero.

You can easily apply the concepts of citation management during your research process even if you decide not to use a specific tool like Zotero. Some tips/suggestions:

-Familiarize yourself with the information that is generally needed to create a citation in APA format. Check out the OCOM citation guide for helpful examples: http://www.ocomlibrary.org/research-help/citation-guide

-When you are doing research online or in the library keep a Word document open that you can transfer the details of promising resources into. For example keep track of the date of research, the places you are looking, and the key citation details (e.g., title, author, publication, date, page numbers, and a link to full text if possible) from the articles you may want to consult again or use for your project. With this method you will still have to spend time reformatting and inserting the citations into your finished paper but by keeping them in one place they are more organized and accessible. [Click here to view a sample citation page]