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Reference Management Software at KU

How to get started • What is reference management software? • Which Product should I use?

KU has purchased the reference management software EndNote for the KU community to use at work, in the public computing labs, and at home: Endnote Web (available to all students, faculty, and staff) and EndNote (available to graduate students, faculty, and staff).

How to Get Started

Instructional Services offers workshops on EndNote and Zotero; for details, see technology.ku.edu/workshops. For a comparison of and information about citation software supported by the KU Libraries, visit the webpage:

How to Select and Use Citation Management Tools

EndNote

To download and install EndNote, visit technology.ku.edu/software/endnote and follow the instructions for Windows or Macintosh under Download EndNote.

EndNote Web (New)

EndNote Web works similarly to EndNote but your library is stored on a remote server. To begin using EndNote Web, visit technology.ku.edu/citing/endnoteweb, and follow the instructions there for creating a new account. In order to use Important: In order to use EndNote Web from off campus, you must create your account using a computer that is accessing the internet through the university network.

EndNote Web does not have all of the same functionality as the desktop version of EndNote. For more information on how these two programs differ see EndNote Web versus EndNote on the EndNote Web site.

More general information about using EndNote at KU is available at www.lib.ku.edu/technology/citing/endnote.

Zotero

Zotero is a free, easy to use Firefox extension to help you collect, manage, and cite your research sources. Save citations and create bibliographies right where you work – in your web browser.

  • Collect: Collect information on books, journal articles, and web sites. Store related images, links, and entire web pages.
  • Organize: Drag and drop items into collections and tag them with terms relevant to your needs. Easily take notes alongside your items.
  • Cite: Create bibliographies in all the major styles. Drag and drop bibliographies into email, blog posts and word processors.
  • Sync: Sync your data between multiple computers. Access your collection from any web browser or mobile device.


What is reference management software?

Reference management software helps researchers at all levels store, track, and cite reference information about their research materials, including books, journal articles, archives, interviews, maps, works of art, and many other types of materials.

Research Stage How Reference Management Software Helps
Gathering information

Researchers import references to materials they have found from bibliographic databases (such as ArticleFirst or Expanded Academic ASAP) or other research tools into their own personal collection of references.

As they review and study those materials, they can add research notes to the references stored in their collection. Information in those references is fully searchable, helping researchers find needed references later.

Writing As researchers write the results of their research (in papers, journal articles, grant proposals, reports, dissertations, and so on), they use reference management software to insert properly formatted in-text citations and build the list of works cited at the end of their document.
Submitting for Publication or Academic Credit When submitting the results of their research, researchers can use reference management software to reformat papers, if necessary (to change from the bibliographic style required for Nature, for instance, to that required by Science, or to change from MLA to APA style).
Sharing Information References can be exported in formatted bibliographies, or the collections of references themselves can be shared electronically with fellow researchers, students, and colleagues.