Tuesday's Tip - Citation Suggestion

My well-worn copy of Agards in America
previously owned by Merritt and Maude Agard

I wonder if Tuesday's Tip can be posted on Wednesday?  At any rate, that is exactly what I am going to do.  

Today I am researching and filling out the John Branch of Frederick Browning Agard's book, Agards in America. This process takes me to several websites as I search and read books about the history of the Upstate New York towns where this family settled. Not only am I learning about my ancestors, but about the areas in which they lived.  I am making notes as I go along, so I can add a shaded box within my monograph to include a little bit about the town or county's history.  

I am careful to cite my sources, but what I haven't done in the past is also record exactly WHERE I found the online book.  That has cost me some time lately as I try to remember the source. So today I am putting in brackets after the footnoted citation the website in which the information was found, i.e. [HeritageQuest] or [Archives.org].  

I hope this hint saves you some time. 

Tuesday's Tip - Zotero

I would be remiss if I did not share information on Zotero, a free citation and note manager plug-in for Firefox.

Connie Reik, Research Librarian at Tuft University's Tisch Library, did a great job explaining and showing her audience at NERGC how this citation manager works.  I hope Connie doesn’t mind if I share her reasons of why to use Zotero:

·      To keep track of research, hits and misses, especially researching on the Internet;

·      Organize your research with tags and subject headings, naming them what you wish;

·      Import bibliographic citation from library catalogs, websites; capture web images;

·      Attach notes to items to record ideas, impressions of sources, etc. as you research.

·      Create standalone notes;

·      Plan your research ahead of time;

·      Create proper citations for standard books, articles, websites, etc.

·      Print bibliographies in proper citation styles;

·      Cite while you write

·      Use offline if the Internet is not available.

Connie methodically went through the steps of using Zotero, explaining how to use many of its functions.  The audience became believers when she showed how a book citation Zotero had captured from a web site was put into correct citation format by this software. She then seamlessly placed that citation into her text as a footnote. At this point one member of the audience couldn’t contain himself. He blurted out, “Where has this been?”  The rest of us were speechless!

Zotero can be downloaded at http://www.zotero.org. Make sure the status bar is activated and you create a Zotero account.  You are now ready to go.  The software is a bit complicated, so plan some time getting used to it and all that it can do for you.