At times, it can be difficult to find a sense of community in AU’s digital sphere. However, there are a great deal of events occurring on a consistent basis. These range from style guide tips for assignments to research tips and tricks.
This Voice Magazine writer recently had a chance to attend an AU research-focused session.
Developing Your Research Series: An Intro to Citation Management w. Zotero Demo took place on January 31, 2024 from 1:30 pm to 2:30 pm MT. A recording of this session is available on AU’s YouTube site.
A total of forty-six students attended this third session of a five-part series, hosted by Jennifer Rempel, AU’s Information Literacy & Resource Access Librarian.
Citation Management Tools: An Introduction
The session began with a quick overview of citation management tools. For those unfamiliar, these tools are software that allows users to easily capture citation information, organize references into collections, and create bibliographies in many styles, including the American Psychological Association (APA) and the Modern Language Association (MLA). In addition, these types of tools also allow collaboration with colleagues.
Some examples include Zotero and Mendeley.
Setting Up Zotero
This particular session focused on helping students become familiarized with Zotero. The session went through how to set up a Zotero account; interested students can set up their own account on zotero.org.
AU Library
The session then went through locations to find citations, beginning with the AU Library, with a focus on ProQuest and EBSCOHost.
Next, the session also briefly covered finding citations on Google Scholar. Although not all sources in this database are scholarly sources, many good articles can still be found.
Another source for citations is the Internet Archive, which has a great deal of scanned texts.
Conclusions
The session concluded with a Question and Answer period with students.
