Bibliographic Tools

Overview:

When conducting research, it is often helpful to use technology to catalog and organize one’s resources.  In addition, bibliographic technologies not only act as personal libraries for what one has read, but they also frequently assist in the writing phase as well.  Often, bibliographic technologies can format parenthetical references and reference pages for your automatically–saving time and energy while increasing quality.  In this lab, you will learn about two different bibliographic technologies: Zotero and EndNoteWeb.

Objectives:
  1. To be able to discuss what bibliographic software is, who uses it, and what they use it for.
  2. To compare and contrast different types of bibliographic software in order to understand which tools might be most appropriate in particular contexts, for particular tasks, and for particular types of users.
  3. To demonstrate the ability to use bibliographic technologies to organize and store a personal research library and utilize the library when writing.
The More You Know:

Zotero

Zotero is a free add-on for the Firefox browser, and stores your bibliographic information right in the browser.  Flip through the quickstart manual and watch some of the Zotero video tutorials.  At a minimum, be sure to watch the following three:

  1. Tour of Zotero
  2. Zotero and Microsoft Word
  3. Zotero and Google Tools

Look at the Zotero Plug-in requirements for MS Word.

BibMe

Sometimes Zotero will not grab a complete bibliography for the source you’ve cataloged. One site that can help you create properly formatted bibliographies is BibMe.  Often times you can search in “Auto-fill” mode to see if a bibliographic reference already exists.  If not, click over to “Manual entry” mode and 1.) Select the media type (book, website, etc.), and 2.) Enter the information requested (Journal Name, Title, URL, etc.).  You can roll over the title of each entry field to get an explanation and help finding that information.

Using a VPN to access the MSU Electronic Resources:

  1. Go to http://vpn.msu.edu and log in with your MSU Net ID and Password
  2. In the “Browse” area at the top right of the page that loads, type in er.lib.msu.edu

Screen recording of the process

Your Performance Tasks:

As you can see, there are several skills that one needs to be able to do in order to successfully utilize these technologies:

  1. Importing references into your bibliographic tool
  2. Modifying references as needed (sometimes, bibliographic info may be missing when imported)
  3. Adding personal notes and information to help remember the important information contained in the resource.
  4. Organizing related entries
  5. Inserting parenthetical references and bibliographies using the tool

Thus, for this lab you will be using Zotero (or Word, paper and pencil, etc.) to organize potential resources for your Video Research Project.  Specifically, you need to do the following to successfully complete your lab:

  1. Locate at least 10 potential resources for your Video Research Project.  By potential resources, we mean journal articles, books, web pages, etc. that contain information on your topic you might consider referencing.  Try the following three search technologies to locate potential resources:
  2. Google Scholar - Google search engine specific to more academic resources.  Can be helpful in identifying resources, but often have to go through MSU Library to find items.
  3. Education Abstracts
    1. Go to the MSU Library’s Electronic Resources page.
    2. Look for the “Find Other E-Resources including Indexes” search and type in “Education Abstracts.”
      1. Here is a website that might help with searching through Education Abstracts
  4. Proquest
    1. Go to the MSU Library’s Electronic Resources page.
    2. In the right-hand column, choose “Proquest” from the “Commonly Used E-Resources
    3. Here is a resource if you need help with using Proquest.
  1. Import a minimum of ten resources into Zotero (paper & pencil, Word, etc.).  Check to make sure all the proper bibliographic information came through.
  2. Organize your resources in a manner that makes the most sense for you.  You might consider using tags or keywords to assist with this.
  3. Choose one of your resources and include notes about it that might be helpful when it comes time to write your literature review.
  4. Create a mock MS Word document (or Google Doc) that shows you know how to insert a reference and a proper bibliography.  Please choose APA (American Psychological Association, 5th) for the formatting style.
Due Date:

All tasks for this lab must be completed by 8:00 am, Thursday, July 22nd.  Because the information will be housed on your computer, you will need to have either Brandon or Emily evaluate your lab work in person.

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