Early in my career as a reference librarian, a well-respected (and slightly intimidating) faculty member marched up to the reference desk and exclaimed, “My RefMan won’t talk to MEDLINE!” I had no idea what he was talking about, but it was clear that he was feeling frustrated and he expected me to be able fix the problem. I didn’t want to let him down. What to do? I quickly...

Many thanks to my colleagues, friends, and family who made this book possible. First and foremost, I owe a debt of gratitude to Sandy Wood, who has been an incredible editor and mentor, supportive and patient but firm.

At the risk of further wearing out a well-worn cliché, we live in an age of information overload. In addition to quantity, information is packaged and delivered in an increasingly wider variety of formats beyond traditional books and journal articles (e.g., websites, blogs, videos, and podcasts). Students, researchers, and librarians have had to learn new skills for finding and evaluating...

This chapter will explore the variety of citation management software options currently on the market and will examine criteria to consider in order to make an informed decision about which program(s) to use to build your own personal library and how best to guide your patrons. Tips for test-driving citation managers and sources for reviews will also be discussed.

In addition to collecting references found when searching an external source, many citation managers can serve as discovery tools. For example, some citation managers allow you to join with colleagues to share and recommend references. You can also use a citation management tool to search some online bibliographic databases or library catalogs directly, without ever having to visit that...

After you’ve expended so much effort to create, grow, and curate your personal collection, it would be a real hardship to lose all of that hard work as a result of hardware or software failure (or even human error). Don’t you simply shudder when you envision the process of re-creating and rebuilding your library, containing perhaps hundreds, if not thousands of references again (not to...

If all you need to do is to insert a couple of references formatted in a common bibliographic style (such as MLA, APA, Chicago, or Vancouver) into a document, you might not even need to avail yourself of a full-fledged citation management program. Many online databases and search engines have a feature that will display references formatted in popular bibliographic styles. These formatted...

This chapter investigates ways to get more mileage from your citation management tool when using your mobile device. Even though you might not be quite ready to write your thesis on your smartphone, there are some tasks it can handle when you need to get some work done and you don’t have access to your regular laptop or desktop computer.

Depending on your environment, the type of support you offer will vary. Your role might be just to get patrons up and running with the software or to guide them through the entire process, from building and organizing their libraries to creating formatted bibliographies in documents.

This chapter will examine some “outside the box” or “off-label” uses for citation managers. Many of these ideas leverage the unique features available in certain tools. Librarians are repurposing citation managers to provide support for their institution’s scholarly communications initiatives, including tracking faculty and student publications, measuring research...

This chapter will examine some of the ways new citation management tools are setting themselves apart from the rest of the pack and how well-known citation managers are following their lead. It will also look at how librarians and other citation manager users can keep abreast of trends and even influence the development of software enhancements in this area. Tips for adapting to (and taking...

Nancy R. Glassman, MLS, MPH, is assistant director of the D. Samuel Gottesman Library of the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, Bronx, New York. Among her responsibilities is to assist students, faculty, and staff with reference management software through workshops and one-on-one consultations. She received her BA from Cleveland...

This innovative series, written and edited for librarians by librarians, provides authoritative, practical information and guidance on a wide spectrum of library processes and operations.