Research Guides: Citation Management Tools: Home

Why Use a Citation Manager?

Citation or reference management tools allow you to maintain a "personal library" of references, citations, and documents.

Citation managers enable researchers to:

Capture and organize reference and citations
Automatically create in-text references, bibliographies and footnotes in a variety of citation styles, MLA, Chicago, APA, etc.
Manage collections of various types of research materials, including citations, charts, documents, PDFs, links, equations, etc.
Import citation information directly from the Library's Catalog, online indexes and databases, and the Web
Share your library of citations with other researchers

Which One Should I Use?

The Bowdoin College Library provides assistance with three citation managers, EndNote, Zotero, and EasyBib. (Bowdoin College has a site license for EndNote.) Choosing a tool to use depends on your individual research process, methods, and needs. In the chart below we have listed the most common uses for citation management tools and have provided our recommendations to meet each need.

I want to	We recommend you use..
Generate a bibliography of a few print resources, or Quickly learn a citation manager for common citation styles	Easy Bib or Zotero
Work from several computers on and off campus	EndNote or Zotero
Work offline	EndNote or Zotero
Write a major research project with many citations	EndNote or Zotero
Customize citation styles, or specialized science citation styles	EndNote or Zotero

In-depth comparison of citation management tools

Help and Instruction

Zotero and EndNote Workshops (Fall 2021)
(All workshop sessions with be held in the ECR, lower level of HL Library)

EndNote for MAC

Wednesday, Oct. 13, 2pm
Tuesday, Nov. 2, 3pm

EndNote for PC

Thursday, Oct. 14, 12pm
Wednesday, Nov. 3, 10am

Zotero

Friday, Oct. 15, 10am
Thursday, Nov. 4, 2pm

Have Zotero, EndNote, citation manager questions or want to set up an individual appointment online or in person?

Zotero, EndNote, or citation managers (Karen Jung)

EndNote (Sue O'Dell)