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Citing your Sources: Online Citation Builders

This guide covers the basics of citing sources. Why do we cite? When should you cite? How should you do it? Find answers to these questions here.

Garbage in, garbage out

garbage

Image: Matt Banks / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Keep in mind...

The citations generated by tools like KnightCite or Citation Builder are only as accurate as the information you put in.

Make sure you have complete, accurate information about your sources before you begin using the tools.

Building and managing citations

Simple Citation Builders

Citation Builders allow you to quickly and easily format individual citations to copy and paste into your paper. Please note: These tools do not allow you to save, organize or share citations.

Bibliographic Management Tools

Bibliographic management tools help you organize your research by providing article links, complete bibliographic metadata and folders for organizing your research by topic. You might consider using one of these tools if you're conducting a major research project, such as a thesis or dissertation.

Tools we use at our library include.

End Note-Similar to Zotero but has a few more features. You can create an EndNote account through the library's Science Citation Index database. Just open up the "My Tools" menu to set up your account.

Zotero-A free tool that lives on your web browser. It lets you collect, organize, cite and share your sources. You can also access your sources from mulitple computers. Check out this guide to find out more.

Info You'll Need

These generators are fairly simple formatting tools,  so you'll still need to collect information about your sources. Here is the information you'll still need to gather, from each of your sources, in order to make citation builders function correctly.

Author name(s)

Date of publication

Title (of book, article and/or periodical)

Volume and issue number (for articles)

Publisher (for books)

Publisher's city and state (for books)

Page numbers (for book chapters and articles)