Citation Resources

It's definitely that time of year again - I've heard question after question the last week about people wanting help with citation. We have ways to help!

Citation, of course, is the way that we tell the people reading our papers (and projects, and whatever else) where we found the information we're using, so other people can find the awesome things we found too.

The mechanics, though, get a bit messy. Between all the different kinds of citation styles, the formatting requirements, and trying to sort out how to cite less common or newly emerging formats (how do you cite a Tweet?), it can get really confusing.

Tools that can help: 

1) RefWorks 
We subscribe to a tool called RefWorks, that will help you store resources and create a bibliography for your paper. You can get there from the library homepage by clicking the image that says RefWorks (or just going to this link.) 

You will need to create an account on RefWorks before you can save any information. More help about this service can be found in our guide to RefWorks, or you can come and ask the library staff, and we'd be glad to show you around the site. RefWorks offers some good tutorials on their site as well.

2) Help with citation styles
We have a great guide to citation styles - it's also linked from our homepage, under Research Tools.

And did you know that if you're in most of our databases, you can get a citation for most of the common styles for that article? Check the sidebar for a citation tool link, or the very bottom of the article.

3) Resources on campus
The library staff are glad to help you (and if you don't want to come into the library, check our home page and see if someone is available by chat.) You can also use the great resources at the Writing Center.  They've also recently put together materials on plagiarism and citation that you might find helpful.

(Got more questions about this or these tools? Comment, and I'll pick them up next week.)