Hello All.

I’ve been asked to summarize responses to my post about reevaluation of citation management software. The post was cross listed to ARLIS-L and MLA-L. As we go forward at Colby College, we are going to make sure we work with our stakeholders (e.g. Writer’s Center and ITS) and develop a phased in approach that takes into account those faculty or students with current projects in RefWorks. Assisting users to transfer their content would be a crucial concern. If anyone has experience with that please feel free to add to the conversation.

Margaret D. Ericson|Scholarly Resources and Services -- Arts Librarian|Bixler Art and Music Library|Colby College Libraries|5662 Mayflower Hill|Waterville, Maine 04901|

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Hi Margaret,

A couple of years ago we re-evaluated our citation management tool support.  Part of this evaluation involved a survey of students and faculty.

Based on the survey we decided to continue to support EndNote, because it is so heavily used in the sciences, and we added Zotero support.  Since then, interest in Zotero has increased and is heavily used by our Digital and Computational Studies faculty.   We found that in addition to the standard tools, students were using a variety of free sources and citation generators; the most popular at the time was EasyBib.     

Each semester we conduct workshops on Zotero, EndNote and an overview workshop that includes EasyBib.  At the request of instructors, Zotero and EndNote are taught to classes as part of the bibliographic instruction.  We also schedule many one-on-one sessions.

I coordinate the citation management activities here and teach the overview class, all the Zotero classes, and some of the EndNote classes.

Good luck with your decision.

Please do not hesitate to contact me if you have questions.

Hi Margaret,

We support RefWorks and also teach Zotero.  Zotero is a good option for people who don't have an institutional affiliation or want a self-standing platform.  I use EndNote myself and like it, but Oberlin doesn't support it.

Good luck!!

-Kathy

Kathleen Abromeit

Public Services Librarian

Oberlin Conservatory Library

77 W. College St., Oberlin, OH   44074

phone:  440/775-5131

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Although at Boulder we still support Refworks and Endnote, we are moving more and more to Zotero and Mendeley, both of which are free. Our library is currently considering cancelling our Refworks subscription.

Personally I feel that Zotero is the best choice for arts & humanities disciplines. Zotero can support by far the most types of sources (including: scores, recordings, images, archival materials, websites etc). It’s open source nature means that it is constantly improving and doesn’t lock users in. Zotero I also find is the best for harvesting citation information from databases, catalogs, and the web. Mendeley is in my opinion best used if you rely almost entirely on PDF’s. I teach Zotero regularly, especially to our grad students.

And that’s my elevator pitch for Zotero. I’m happy to answer any Zotero questions!

-Alex

Alexander Watkins

Assistant Professor / Art & Architecture Librarian

University of Colorado Boulder

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303-492-3966

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Alex,

Will RefWorks users be able to transfer their existing folders to Zotero?

Thanks, Ruth Thomas, Mugar Library, Boston University

At Northeastern we are still supporting Refworks and EndNote as well, but we have also begun teaching and supporting Zotero (up to a point, as we are learning it ourselves). Same reasons as Alex gave below – it’s free, and it harvests info effectively from a wide variety of sources better than the other tools. We aren’t necessarily pushing it when we teach – yet, anyway – but if people ask, we are mentioning it as a good option.

We’re also finding that more of our users these days are wanting to share reference libraries among multiple co-authors, sometimes at different institutions, and Zotero seems to be far better for that, partly since all co-authors may not have access to Refworks or EndNote through their institutions, and partly because it is easy to make a group library that everyone can easily add to and access (much easier than passing an EndNote library file back and forth!). So we are definitely recommending Zotero in those scenarios.

One of the reasons for moving away from Endnote and many others like it, is there are now items which will do it for you, either web based, or in ones own word processing software.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_reference_management_software

A lot of this software is free and can reside on your own computer or can be, or is, also connected with the Internet web, and can create the correctly formatted item.

    Of course one has to choose which one provides best for students...each with their own needs. One piece of software will not work for some, while it will for others.

https://www.libraries.psu.edu/psul/lls/choose_citation_mgr.html

Note-taker software and citation services also comes into play when using an article or a web site; as some of these will create a citation for the site or the article. Scribendi says, "

feel free to send your work, along with your desired style guide, to our academic proofreaders and we will be happy to format and organize the citations for you."

http://www.scribendi.com/advice/a_review_of_free_citation_software.en.html

Lots of people are using Evernote now because many add-ons. One of the neatest tricks is to take pictures of a note...maybe a note by someone else with your phone or iPad, and send it to Evernote. Evernote's search engine will find any word in that hand-written note and bring it up with other notes with that word. Combine your notes with such online sites such as Bibcite, EasyCite, Citation Machine, WriteCite, Citation Maker, etc. it becomes a much easier process.

I don't think this really answers your question other than tell you that yes...people are migrating away from a single well known citation software simply because they find the others easier to use.

You can see what other universities are doing about citation management by searching google with "music citation software" terms.

Hope this helps a little.

Paul Jackson, Trescott Research.

Hello Colleagues (apologize for any duplication due to cross listing).

Colby College is reexamining our instructional support for bibliographic citation management software, in light of new options. We have been supporting RefWorks and Endnote for number of years. However, students and faculty are migrating elsewhere.

Is there a shift out there amongst my colleagues to other Bib Citation Tools that you are actively teaching and supporting? Please let me know what you are moving towards and a quick reason or two.  Or, if you have decided to stay with a particular platform after an assessment, that would be helpful too.

Both Music and Art are challenged by output formats, and I’m wondering if any of the newer tools meet arts needs more effectively.

Margaret D. Ericson|Scholarly Resources and Services -- Arts Librarian|Bixler Art and Music Library|Colby College Libraries|5662 Mayflower Hill|Waterville, Maine 04901|

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(207) 859-5662