Librarians at Sarah Lawrence are prepared to help you use Mendeley and Zotero. You can always email us when you have questions.
Research consultations are a way to meet with librarians to discuss your research, including how to find resources, managing citations, and how to best utilize the tools available to you through the Library. If you need support with any of the tools mentioned in this guide, book a consultation at https://reference.youcanbook.me/.
Citation Management Tools (also called bibliographic management tools or citation managers) help you organize your research, notes, and bibliographic information efficiently. They make it possible to generate reference lists, citations, and bibliographies in many styles with just a few clicks.
This page discusses two popular types of Citation Management Tools: Citation Management Programs and Citation Builders.
Citation management programs allow you to build personal research libraries, generate citations and bibliographies, and much more.
How do citation management programs help?
What are citation management programs NOT able to do?
These programs will not always create a perfect bibliography or reference list. For example, you will still have to know APA, MLA, or Chicago and check over your results. It will not correct errors or omissions that were in the database from which you retrieved references. It will not always know what type of material you are putting into it from a database (e.g. it cannot always distinguish a proceeding from a book).
Sarah Lawrence College Library currently supports Mendeley and Zotero for citation management. Both tools offer robust features for organizing your research and are free.
Citation Builders are web-based tools that allow you to quickly create citations and bibliographies but not to store information or link to word-processing software. They are typically free and do not require an account. These tools are great for generating quick bibliographies but if you are hoping to reuse sources across multiple projects, organize your materials and notes, or build a shared research library, we recommend using a citation management tool like Zotero or Mendeley instead.
Recommended Citation Builders: