by Kari Mofford
While it would be nice if all the academic leaders in APA, MLA, Chicago…etc. could all get together and create one citation style to rule them all…it probably won’t happen soon. In the meantime, we do have tools to help us figure out these styles. While citation generators like Citation Machine are great, they should be checked for accuracy, as it’s not unheard of for them to have typos, issues with capitalization, or other mistakes. They are just pulling information from fields and their data is only as good as what they harvest. Check out our Libguide for some good sources on many of the styles.
Another tool that can be very helpful is a Citation Management system. This is a great thing to have if you are gathering multiple citations for your thesis, dissertation, research paper, etc. Here at the Claire T. Carney Library we support Zotero, which is free! We have a Libguide on how to download it onto your laptop and lots of information to set up your account. It makes it very easy to capture your citations, organize them, and create in-text citations and bibliographies. Like citation generators, you should still double check the citations after they are in Zotero for accuracy, but it’s a great product and invaluable for projects requiring the gathering of many, many citations. Don’t hesitate to reach out to your librarian to ask for assistance with any citation questions!
