Resource of the Week #100: Some Presentations on Reference Management Software

[This post is by AuthorAID community member Lenny Rhine, of Librarians Without Borders/Medical Library Association (USA). Thank you, Lenny! —Barbara]

Reference management software can help in writing research articles and theses. This software allows you to create bibliographies and footnotes in the different formats that publishers require (for example, the Harvard, Vancouver, and American Psychological Association bibliographic formats). From various databases and search engines, you can download the citations into the reference management tools.

There are 2 free downloadable options available on the Internet: Zotero and Mendeley. Zotero is a free reference management tool that is available as an add-on for the Firefox web browser. It can be downloaded from http://www.zotero.org. The second option is the  “Earth” version of Mendeley. It is available from http://www.mendeley.com and has Desktop (individual) and Web (group) options. You may prefer one over the other.

PowerPoint presentations about these reference management tools are available on the HINARI training page. These presentations provide an overview of each tool and step-by-step guidance for installing and using each one.

The Zotero presentation was developed by Ingeborg Nagel, MSc, formerly of the Royal Tropical Institute (KIT) in the Netherlands. The Mendeley presentations were developed by Mark Gil Bendo, MLIS, World Health Organization, Regional Office for the Western Pacific.