Managing your References
One major problem we all face is keeping track of the documents and references we locate. Over time, you might find hundreds of references relevant to your study and research. These have to be managed so that you can keep track of them. This can be done using notes, index cards or with bibliographic management software.
This software enables you to collect and organise all the bibliographic references, from a variety of sources, in one place. The database can be added to, or edited, at any time as you find more information. Once a reference has been keyed in or imported, it may be retrieved in a number of ways, e.g. by searching by author, year, source or subject keyword. You can then manipulate the references you have collected to produce bibliographies or lists in any order.
One of the main uses will be preparing bibliographies for theses, research papers and reports. Bibliographic software allows you to select the relevant references from your collection as you are typing your paper. The software will then sort all the references you have marked, cite them correctly within the manuscript as footnotes, and produce the bibliography at the end.
There are many bibliographic management software programs available, examples are Endnote, Reference Manager and Procite. Unfortunately most of this software is not available as freeware.
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