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Late Antique-Medieval Studies (LAMS)

Citation Management Tools

Citation Managers are tools to help you keep track of your citations as you research and to create/format your citations and bibliography. For example, Zotero allows you to keep citations, full text articles, and other research resources organized in one place. You can also use these tools to format your bibliographies and the notes/citations in your papers according to the appropriate style (APA, MLA, Chicago, etc.).

Watch this video to learn more about Zotero

Which citation management tool is right for you?

 

RefWorks

Zotero

Mendeley

Strengths?

Allows users to share citations

Good for organizing citations for papers

Web-based

Since Claremont Colleges Library has a site license, there's no cost

 

Simple download of citation records

Good for managing a variety of formats, including web pages

Offers most functionality in a free, open-source product

Great for managing PDFs

Has a social aspect. Can see what other users are reading and citing. Find other members with common research interests.

Does an excellent job of pulling citation metadata from PDFs

Can share citations and documents with others

Cost?

Free via Claremont Colleges Library license. See the RefWorks guide for information and how to sign up for your individual account. 

Free with 300 MB of back-up storage.  Storage upgrades available for a monthly fee. Open source. 

Download Zotero

See the Zotero research guide for more information.

 

Free with 2GB personal & 100 MB shared. Storage upgrades available for a monthly fee.

Download Mendeley

 

Learning curve?

Fairly quick to learn; many online user guides and demos

 

Claremont Colleges Library does offer Refworks training classes

Quick to learn; simple design, many online user guides and demos

 

Claremont Colleges Library does offer Zotero training classes

Quick to learn; Pretty simple interface

 

Claremont Colleges Library does offer Mendeley training classes

This chart adapted with permission from the MIT Overview of Citation Software at MIT research guide.