Bibliographic Tools Overview

Please see your LFC if you have any questions. 

RefWorks:

• New reworks releasing late-2016 will be able to store docs like PDFs, in the cloud
• New version will be able to upload a document from your computer, so it can be used for more than just library resources
• made for libraries
• easy to “Export” from lib resources to RW
• can organize citations into folders
• To create bib, Create Bibliography, choose format
• Imports abstract
• Can add personal notes
• Word plug-in, requires admin privileges for Windows install, requires Java for Mac (true for new version?)
• How to add new record - “Add a new reference” or “Search an online catalog” - good option to find a resource is to search “Library of Congress” - can search by title, author, or ISBN
• Cost? Free!
• Good video tutorials

Mendeley:

• Mendeley.com
• Good tutorial videos to learn how to use
• Looks similar to Beta RW
• Desktop, iPhone, iPad, etc
• Data stored in cloud
• Web-based
• Chrome “Extension” for Mendeley - adds a red button in upper right of Chrome
• Also a standalone app for Mac - choose when to manually sync
• Can create a particular folder to be watched by Mendeley where you can save PDFs and Mendeley Desktop will automatically add PDFs to the cloud when you place them into this folder.
• Can hold PDFs
• Can annotate PDFs - private
• Tags
• Gives you suggestions based on what is in your library, last thing added to your library
• Uses “crowdsourcing”
• 2GB free, perhaps 500+ articles or more
• There is a search for duplicates option
• Word add-on - get from Mendeley website
• Can create groups for collaborating
• Would it work with Google Docs for collaborative writing?
• Could use Office OneDrive to store Word doc for collaborative writing.
• Auto-renaming option to automatically create new names for uploaded PDFs using Author, Title, Year, etc

Zotero:

• similar to Mendeley
• Cloud access
• iPad, phone, laptop
• Pricing - 300MB for free, 2GB $1.67/month
• Word plug-ins
• Pages plug-ins
• Zotero app for Mac, PC?
• Folders
• Tags
• Saves URLs
• Chrome Extension - Save to Zotero
• Pulls in URL from wherever you downloaded
• New resources automatically are put into whichever folder you have selected in the Desktop app
• Auto-syncs
• Can manually sync if adding things manually
• Word plug-in/add-on
• Does Z have an auto-rename feature to name PDFs if they have generic names?
• GoodReader iOS app can be used to mark up PDFs - highlighting, boxing, typing in margins. Then email marked up PDF to yourself, download on Mac/PC and drag PDF into Zotero Desktop app. You may want to keep an un-marked-up version, if you plan to share with students to read.