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 ZoteroBib. (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	ZoteroBib 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

Have Zotero, EndNote, citation manager questions?

Would you like to set up an in-person or online appointment
to learn Zotero or EndNote?

Zotero, EndNote, or citation managers (Karen Jung)

Email Schedule appointment

EndNote (Sue O'Dell)

Email Schedule appointment