 Hi, in this video you'll be introduced to citation management basics for grad students. If your current system of organizing your references and PDFs looks like this, or like this, citation managers can help. Reference management programs, or citation managers, store and organize citation information or metadata for all of the sources that you use in your research. These can include journal articles, books and book chapters, everything from film to podcasts to legal cases to newspaper articles, and more. These programs support citing in major citation styles such as APA and Chicago with some custom styles such as ACS. You can import directly from library databases and from the web. You can build bibliographies with a single click. There's easy integration with word processing programs like Word and sometimes even Google Docs, and these programs often support PDF attaching and annotating, which allows you to work with your reference materials within the programs. You can also tag and share your libraries with your colleagues. At the USU library, we support three citation management programs, Zotero, EndNote, and Mendeley. You can learn more about the librarians who help with these programs at libguides.usu.edu slash organizers. Also on that guide, you'll find demonstration videos that will give you a sense of what these tools look like and what they can do. When you're choosing a program, whether you choose Zotero, EndNote, Mendeley or something else, there are a few major questions that you would like to ask yourself. First off, and most importantly often for graduate students, is the cost of these programs. They range from free to about $120, the full version of EndNote, and oftentimes for paid programs you'll be able to get a student discount while you're still in school. Many of these programs exist in web-based or cloud and desktop versions. You'll want to think about where you'll be working with your citation library most often and choose a tool that will allow you to work in the location of your choice. You also want to make sure, of course, that the program you choose is compatible with your operating system, if there is tech support available, and whether these tools are open or proprietary. For example, Zotero is an open source program, whereas Mendeley and EndNote are proprietary programs. Many of these programs have limitations on your library size, so you'll want to make sure that you'll have enough space to manage the size of reference library that you have. You may also be limited in how many files you can attach and how you can annotate the PDFs that you attach to your references. A few additional things to consider. You want to make sure that the formats that you will be importing and exporting in are supported by the program, that the citation style you'll be using for your term paper, thesis, or dissertation is supported by the program, and that you're able to easily use any browser extensions that exist with these programs. There's finally a few other things to consider. Integration with your word processor, easy sharing of your library, the ability to search databases within the program, and making sure that the program will allow you to organize your references and materials in a way that makes sense to you. These are a lot of factors to consider, but they boil down to three major questions. First, is the program usable for you? Does it have an interface that you enjoy using that makes sense to you and is intuitive to you? Second major factor is longevity. Make sure that you're investing your time and your money in a program that will see you through the length of the time that you'll need to use a citation management program. So for a master's student who doesn't anticipate using a reference library after school, a free version of Zotero might be enough to get you where you need to go. If you are a doctoral student in chemistry, anticipating a faculty or a research career, investing in EndNote might see you through the duration of that career. And finally, you'll want to consider what the convention is in your discipline. Make sure that you are not the outlier in terms of your citation management program. If everyone in your discipline uses Mendeley, it's probably easy for you to join them. This will allow you to easily share citation libraries with fellow graduate students, with colleagues, and with faculty saving work for all of you. Regardless of the reference manager that you choose, you want to think about longevity before you invest time and money in these programs. You also want to start now while you're still a graduate student. You can familiarize yourself with the program that you choose when the stakes are low, such as in a term paper. That way, you'll know the idiosyncrasies of your program before you work on formatting your thesis or dissertation. Very importantly, you also want to edit citation information at the time that you import that citation into your reference manager. This will allow for clean, simple use in your writing process. Finally, consider tagging and sharing to boost the usefulness of your library. Better to do the work once and share it with your peers rather than having everyone in your cohort have to go through the same process. And finally, ask for help. We have reference librarians happy to help you with any of the supported citation managers, so tarot, end note, or Mendeley.