Off The Shelf

RefWorks rolled out at the beginning of the summer, but many learners are just discovering it now.  It’s a great tool to help you stay organized and painlessly create bibliographies, but it’s not perfect and it can’t do everything.

So, if you’ve been on the fence about a RefWorks account, here are some important considerations that can help you decide.

Pros:

• Keep citation information about all of your resources in a single location.  No more lost citations.
• Access RefWorks anywhere you have an internet connection.
• Organize your citations in folders as you see fit.  Create as many or as few as you want.
• Use Write-N-Cite to create your in-text citations and bibliography – don’t let a moment of distraction turn into plagiarism.
• Link back to the full text in the database.  Save space and paper.
• Save time – let RefWorks take care of a lot of the data entry that makes bibliographise so time consuming.

Cons:

• RefWorks isn’t as smart as you are.  It’s just a computer program, so it will get some citation details wrong.  Be sure you check your bibliography before you turn it in.
• RefWorks can’t hold PDFs of articles.  You’ll have to link back to the full text in the library.
• If you have a ton of resources already, it can be tough to get them into RefWorks.  RefWorks does import EndNote records and BibTex records, but if you just have a list in Word, it’s tough to move them over en masse.
• Some databases don’t export records directly to RefWorks.  Check the library’s guide about exporting articles from library databases.

 - Erin