Citing Sources

A citation management tool will help you:

• Collect references as you research a topic
• Organize your references
• Create bibliographies
• Insert references and bibliographies into your research papers
• Share research and citations with a group for a collaborative project 

There are many citation management tools/software available, both for free and for fee. We will just discuss the two systems that Le Moyne recommends and offers on this guide.

Our library recommends Zotero as the best citation management software for students.

We recommend Zotero because it has the following advantages:

• User-friendly and easy to use
• Free to use, so you will have access after you are no longer at Le Moyne.
• Works easily with Google Docs or Microsoft Word
• Compatible with any system (Mac, Windows or Linux) 
• Allows you to work collaboratively with groups to share references and generate citations
• Generates a full bibliography or a single citation very easily in both the web-based or desktop versions
• Allows you to add PDFs, images, audio and video files, snapshots of web pages to your citation library
• Zotero also offers ZoteroBib, which helps you build a bibliography instantly from any computer or device, without creating an account or installing any software.

Zotero does have one limitation:

• Zotero does charge for storage exceeding 300MB. But for most Le Moyne users, this would not be an issue. And the cost of adding storage is very reasonable for an individual user who does exceed this limit.

For more information about using Zotero, please consult the more detailed Zotero Guide.