Citing Your Sources: Citation Tools

Zotero is the only research tool that automatically senses content, allowing you to add it to your personal library with a single click. Whether you're searching for a preprint on arXiv.org, a journal article from JSTOR, a news story from the New York Times, or a book from your university library catalog, Zotero has you covered with support for thousands of sites.

There are a number of popular citation tools that harvest bibliographic data from catalogues, databases and websites. They halp you to keep track of the sources you use and format your bibliography.

Some schools use EndNote and RefWorks. These are utilities that inistitutions can license or individuals can sign up to use.

The Tyndale Library recommends that you use Zotero. This is a free open source program that downloads quickly to your Mozilla FireFox web browser. It is a very powerful tool for you to keept track of your research.

This guide will provide information on management tools and citation generators.

Citation management tools allow you to:

• build a database of your references.
• attach articles to references so that all your research is in one place.
• store notes with references.
• search references
• cite your sources in your paper with a touch of a button.
• automatically build your bibliograhy (also called works cited/reference list).
• easily change your citation style if needed (e.g. APA to MLA, Chicago, etc) .

Citation generators allow you to:

• create a citation and biblographic reference that you can copy and paste into your document.

 NOTE: Citation generators do not save your references.

Here is a list of free online citation generators. These generators allow you to enter your resource's (e.g. journal article, web page, book) information and then it allows you to create a citation and biblography (works cited) reference that you can copy and paste into your paper.

EasyBib

• Creates citations and biblioraphic references for MLA, APA, Turabian, and Chicago styles that you can copy and paste into your paper.
• Look up feature allows you to look up your reference (e.g. by URL, title, ISBN, etc) and automatically convert into a citation and bibliographic reference.
• You can also take notes here and colour code your various sections. Look at the videos to see how this works.

BibME

• Creates citations and biblioraphic references for MLA, APA, Turabian, and Chicago styles that you can copy and paste into your paper.
• Look up feature allows you to look up your reference (e.g. by URL, title, ISBN, etc) and automatically convert into a citation and bibliographic reference.
• Allows you to create a free account and save you references for future use.

Citation Machine

• Creates citations and biblioraphic references for MLA, APA, Turabian, and Chicago styles that you can copy and paste into your paper.
• Has an ISBN look up option for APA and MLA styles.

KniteCite

• Creates citations and bibliographic references for MLA, APA, Turabian, and Chicago styles that you can copy and paste into your paper.
• Multiple formats available to create citations from

Bibliography.com

• Bibliography.com aims to deliver comprehensive & authoritative reference information … fast, offering helpful articles and examples on all reference styles including APA, MLA, Chicago and more
• Use with Google Chrome extension