Librarian
Why Cite?
The primary reasons for citing sources in a research paper 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. Chicago is frequently used in history, but you may be called upon to use others.
Online Style Manuals
- MLA Style CenterGuidelines and FAQs on using MLA style.
- Chicago Manual of Style Online This link opens in a new windowElectronic version of one of the most used style guides for writing in American English. Provides rules and suggestions for bibliographies and other forms of documentation such as parenthetical references, footnotes, and endnotes. Includes instructions on how to cite electronic and online sources. Also contains a chapter on grammar and usage (punctuation, spelling, etc.).
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.
- 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.
- 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).
- MendeleyMendeley is a free reference manager and academic social network that can help you organize your research, collaborate with others online, and discover the latest research. You can automatically generate bibliographies, collaborate with other researchers online, import papers from other research software, find relevant papers based on what you’re reading, and access your papers from anywhere online.
