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Why Cite?
The primary reasons for citing sources when presenting research are:
- to give credit to the authors whose work you have drawn upon, and
- to allow readers to track down your sources, should they wish to do so.
There are many style guides for formatting citations and creating bibliographies. The major styles are:
- MLA Style, from the Modern Language Association;
- APA Style, from the American Psychological Association, and
- Chicago Style, from the University of Chicago Press
Basic Guides and Tools
These tools are helpful for quick questions and basic citation formatting.
- ZoteroBibZoteroBib is a tool from the makers of the Zotero citation manager--it's perfect for short bibliographies in lots of different citation formats
- Purdue OWLPurdue's OWL (Online Writing Lab) provides guides to MLA, APA, and Chicago styles, as well as advice on research, writing and citation.
- Georgetown's Citation ToolsThe Georgetown Library's Citation Tools page is full of recommendations for managing and formatting citations.
Citation Management Systems
These tools allow you to gather citations and PDFs in one place and then quickly create a bibliography. You have to start using them well before your paper is due, however.
- ZoteroZotero is a free tool designed to help you gather, manage and share information about books, articles, web pages and other digital objects that you are using in your research, and to generate citations and bibliographies. Zotero is a Mozilla browser plugin. You can choose to gather your data on your hard drive (if you are working mainly from one computer), or on a flash drive or a network (if you frequently access your data at multiple workstations).
- RefWorks This link opens in a new windowRefWorks is an online research management, writing, and collaboration tool designed to help researchers gather, manage, store, and share information and generate citations and bibliographies.
Writing Assistance
The Georgetown University Writing Center is a free writing resource open to all Georgetown students. Graduate and undergraduate students trained in teaching writing are available to assist you at any stage of your writing process. The Writing Center offers assistance in topic development, general organization, guidance on paper revisions, and specific or recurring structural problems with writing.
