Citation managers: websites and software
Citation managers are tools designed to help you manage your footnotes/citations/references and create bibliographies. Programs like RefWorks, Procite, and Endnote will do this for you--at a price. These free tools will do the same job for a lot less money.
Websites
Similar to popular social bookmarking sites like Del.icio.us (http://del.icio.us/) but designed for scholars. These sites allow you to easily bookmark webpages or sources you find and save them to a website you can visit from any computer. What makes it social is that you can see what other people have saved, add comments, and use other people's lists to help you find new websites or other sources on your topic.
Connotea
http://www.connotea.org/
Designed primarily for scientists, who mostly work with articles. Automatically recognizes articles and fills in citaiton details, but you will need to fill in additional information on books you find. Can export your bookmarks in a form Jabref, BibDesk and other programs can use to create a bibliography.
CiteULike
http://www.citeulike.org/
Good for all types of scholarly literature, though also article-focused. A bit clunkier than Connotea and Delicious, but still quite good. Can export your bookmarks in a form Jabref, BibDesk and other programs can use to create a bibliography.
Programs (download and install)
Zotero
http://www.zotero.org/
The best of the bunch. A reference manager and database of citation information. Automatically recognizes articles and books from library databases, the catalog, and websites like Amazon and creates citation information for them. Allows you to save a copy of an article or webpage and describe it so you can find it later. Creates properly formatted bibliographies and citations in APA, MLA, Chicago/Turabian, and many other styles. Note: Zotero is an extension to the Firefox browser, so you have to install Firefox first. The main disadvantage is that it stores your citations on the computer you install Firefox on--but if you install the portable version of Firefox on a USB flash drive you can carry it all around with you and use it on any computer.
Firefox
http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/
Portable Firefox for Windows
http://portableapps.com/apps/internet/firefox_portable
Portable Firefox for Mac
http://www.freesmug.org/portableapps/firefox
Jabref (Mac or Windows)
http://jabref.sourceforge.net/
A reference manager you can install and run on any system. Allows you to input the citation details for articles, books, and other sources, and store them on your computer. Can be linked to Microsoft Word or OpenOffice.org word procesors to allow you to easily cite sources and create bibliographies in all major styles. Bibtex files exported from Connotea, CiteULike, or Google Scholar (or many other web sources) can be directly imported in bulk.
Bibdesk (Mac only)
http://bibdesk.sourceforge.net/
Very similar to Jabref, but with a prettier Mac interface.
Chris Strauber
Reference & Web Services Librarian
strauberc@wofford.edu
864-597-4308