Citation Managers to the Rescue!
Posted: June 26, 2025
Are you drowning in a sea of articles and resources while conducting your research? A citation management system could be your lifesaver! These powerful tools are designed to help you organize, store, and format your scholarly references with ease.
What is a Citation Manager?
Also known as reference managers or bibliographic management software, citation managers are programs that streamline the process of handling your research materials. They’re incredibly useful for:
- Keeping track of important articles and other works: No more losing track of that crucial paper you found last week.
- Formatting citations correctly: While you still need to learn how to format in APA or AMA correctly, these systems can automatically format citations in a wide variety of styles.
- Facilitating research collaboration: Some systems even allow you to share research with a group of users, making teamwork a breeze.
Most citation managers offer a suite of valuable features, allowing you to:
- Store your selected citations and even full articles
- Create correctly formatted lists of citations in various styles
- Double-check your formatting to ensure accuracy
- Take notes on or about your saved articles
- Share your selected citations and articles with others
The main citation management software options are Zotero, EndNote Basic, EndNote Desktop, or Mendeley. Find a comprehensive comparison table of these options on our Citation Management LibGuide.
To learn more about Zotero, check out this video.
To learn more about EndNote Basic, check out this video.
To learn more about EndNote Desktop, check out this video.
To learn more about Mendeley, check out this video.
As always, if you have any questions, please contact your liaison librarian.