DOIs, Citation Styles, & Citation Mangers: Gateways to Graduate Students

Graduate students are deeply involved in their research and scholarly topics. They often seek out any techniques to help save them time and let them focus on their scholarship. Citations can be seen as unwanted complexities that get in the way. For that reason, librarians can use presentations, workshops, tutorials, and other information literacy delivery mechanisms focused on citation styles, managers, and/or DOIs as a means to offer assistance to graduate students while also introducing information literacy concepts as well as providing information about databases and library services. While undergraduates may not need the power and complexity of full citation managers or details about the various incarnations of DOIs and when to use them, graduate students are reading and using dozens of sources and are receptive to learning how to manage their sources, especially for writing a thesis, dissertation, a professional project, journal articles, or any item with an extensive bibliography. Citation managers, like EndNote, Mendeley, and Zotero (to name several of the dozens available), can be a huge time-saving tool, but all of them tend to have a steep learning curve. Positioning the library as the primary source for citation management support and instruction opens the door for many other information literacy topics. Uses of citation managers include literature searching from within the manager, integration with databases and publisher web sites, citation elements (like DOI explanations), variations in citation styles, and issues with scholarly publishing. Troubleshooting issues with citation managers can lead to explanations about organizations as authors, authority lists for authors or journal titles, title variants, data management, and permanence of URLs. A citation manager can be used at every step of the way from article searching, to reading, analyzing, note taking, organizing, citing, and publishing. Beyond just the mechanics of how to get citation managers to work, such instruction can position librarians to be guides for the whole research and writing process. This presentation will include audience polling, invite participant input, and have time for questions and answers. (I can also easily expand this from a 30 minute presentation to a 90 minute interactive workshop.