Education

What can I do with a citation management tool?

  Create bibliographies and references automatically
  Check for and remove duplicate citations
  Add annotations, subjects, and descriptions to your citations
  Re-use your research over time
  Embed footnotes, end notes, and in-text citations in a document

What can't it do?

  Correct errors present in the original database records
  Create a perfect bibliography or Works Cited list, you must still check them for accuracy
  Create legal citation formats
  Can not import citations from a text file, Word File, or sheet of paper automatically

There are many citation management tools out there. And many of them come and go, particularly the free ones. For a current list of tools and their features, this Wikipedia page is your best bet. But at the end of the day, two really important features in choosing a tool are:

1) it's used by the researchers you work with

2) there's support for users on campus

Here at UMass Amherst, the Libraries support Zotero. We offer regular workshops as part of the Library Workshop Series, as well as consultation services and classroom presentations on request. We also have an institutional subscription, which offers unlimited storage for cloud storage of your library and any group libraries you own. For help with Zotero, please contact Zotero Support Coop.

We are able to offer consultations on two other tools: Mendeley and LaTeX with Overleaf:
For help with Mendeley, please contact Rebecca Reznick-Zellen.
For help with LaTeX with Overleaf, please contact Rebecca Reznik-Zellen or Brendan Kelly.

While this guide is all about citation management tools, you may feel the need to brush up on your knowledge of citation formatting and other rules for a specific style.  Below are some Library Information Literacy Modules on citation styles.  These contain video tutorials, short quizzes, and more materials to help with the topic.  Lastly, links to the citation style guides available through the Libraries.