Organizing your literature (citation managers)

How do you organize the found literature your paper or thesis? In the old days you had card catalogues (kaartenbakken) were you wrote the reference of the relevant book or article on a paper card. Nowadays you can make your own catalogue system in a digital form. It is called: a citation manager. From a database you can export references directly to your citalion manager. There you can add information, for instance a URL, your own abstract and keywords. A reference of a book in the digital citation manager can also be exported -in the right output style- to a MS Word document. Therefor a citation manager saves you a lot of time, because you do not have to type the references over.  

Three citation managers
At the UvA we offer support three citation manager systems: Refworks, Mendeley and Zotero. My personal preference is: Zotero. On the use and differences we made a short clip.

Workshops at the UvA
We also offer workshops on the three citation managers. You will find the dates of the (zoom) workshops on our website. On our website you will also find more informations on installing and using Zotero, Refworks and Mendely

So if you are starting on your thesis, organize you literature via one of the citation managers. 

 

Related blogpost

• 3 Thesis Tips
• What are the right keyword?
• Finding a book with Google Scholar
• How to cite a kindle book

  

* Photograph of catalogue card system at the Library of Royal Central School of Speech and Drama in 2019 (WvdB).