Track and Organize Resources

Quick poll: how do learners keep track of articles and resources currently?

Advantages of an Electronic Resource Organizer

• Use during research and reading phases of thesis writing to track references and resources
• Organized
• Ability to search your own collection
• Keep your own notes regarding resources you have found
• Helps in preparing the final paper citations and reference section
• Helps switch between different style manuals without re-typing the information

Disadvantages of an Electronic Resource Organizer

• Needs to be created and maintained - it is only as good as the information put into it
• Can take time to learn
• Can take time to input information
• Needs to be backed up to avoid loss of information
• Does not prepare citations and reference section perfectly - you still need to check the formatting

RefWorks

Access

RefWorks is a program made available to us through UMD's Library. You will need to be on campus or authenticate in order to use this service.

To access RefWorks:

1. Access the UMD Library main page
2. Click on the "Research" tab
3. In the left-hand navigation area of the Research page, click "RefWorks"
4. In the section "How to start", click the link to RefWorks
5. If you are not on UMD campus or using the VPN, you will need to use your UMD username and password to authenticate
6. If you have never used RefWords, you will need to create an account
7. If you have a RefWorks account (which is different than your UMD account!), enter your Log-in Name and Password to access the program

Create Account

If you do not have a RefWorks account, you need to follow these few steps to create one:

1. On the RefWorks login center page for UMD, click the link "Sign up for an Individual Account"
2. Provide your name - this is your real name, not a log in
3. Create a login name. I highly recommend you use your UMD user name for the RefWorks login name just to reduce the number of things you need to remember to use the system
4. Create a password. If you use the UMD password, it will be easier to remember. However, keep in mind that this information will be stored by an organization other than UMD.
5. Enter your email address
6. Select your user type
7. Select a focus area
8. Click the "Register" button

Tutorial

New users should see a page that offers guidance in getting started with RefWorks. While the guidance and tutorials are very good, you can skip them initially.

If you want to return to the tutorial or other portions of the help system:

1. From nearly any page in RefWorks, click the "Help" tab near the top of the page
2. Choose the tutorial or quickstart guide or use the help system

Overview of the Main Screen

The main screen (in standard view) shows you abbreviated information about the references you have entered.

The tool bar, near the top of the page, has a group of tabs, and most functions (other than entering a reference) are completed by choosing options from this bar.

Enter a Reference Manually

This process stores the information about a reference in your database. It does not find references for you, and it does not store the actual document. It can keep the URL to a specific Web page, if appropriate.

Note: if you have a large number of references in another program, you probably can export the information from the old program and import it into RefWorks. Before you do this, however, you should compare features to be sure that the switch is worth the learning curve of a new program.

To create a reference manually:

1. From any page in RefWorks, click the "References" tab
2. Select "Add New Reference"
3. In the field "View required fields for:" select the appropriate style. For our purposes, this is probably APA 5th edition. This will help mark the fields required for your types of references when using the APA style manual which helps make sense of the MANY fields available. The red "*" indicates a required field for that type of document under APA guidelines
4. Choose the type of reference from the drop-down list. Let's use my Web page as a reference just to make it easy. So, look through the reference types for "Web Page" and click on it
5. Choose the source type. For my Web page, it would be "Electronic"
6. Input the author's name, last name first. (Johnson, Barbara Z.)
7. Input the title. My Web site is not a great example, since it really has no title. So, pretend and type in something like "Barb's Web Page"
8. Input the Last Updated Year. Sometimes, a Web page will display the date it was last updated. If it does not, enter "n.d." for no date. If you use many electronic sources that are not proper e-journals, you will use this convention frequently
9. Scroll through the rest of the fields, completing those with red "*" to the best of your ability. You can always go back and edit these later!
10. Make sure you save the reference! There is a button near the top of this page that says "Save Reference" - if you do not, the reference will disappear

Search a Database from within RefWorks

You MAY be able to avoid typing information in manually for each reference by searching a database from within RefWorks itself. The difficulty is that not all databases are available in this manner.

To search a database from within RefWorks:

1. From any page in RefWorks, click the "Tools" tab
2. Select "Search Online Catalog or Database"
3. From the "Online Catalog or Database to Search" drop down menu, choose the appropriate database. Note that many databases, such as ERIC are not in this list
4. Choose the maximum number of references to download at one time. A smaller number will speed up the page loading, which can be important if you are on a slow connection
5. Type in a descriptor (keyword) in either the Quick Search or in an Advanced Search field
6. Click the "Search" button

Citation in Documents

If you want, you can insert a small code in a document while writing to indicate that RefWorks should later insert the reference in the text and add the document to the bibliography of the document. To do this, you need to be aware of the reference ID of each item in your database. For each item, the reference ID is at the top left of the item's title.

To insert a temporary code for formatting later:

1. Open your document in your word processor
2. When you reach a point where you need to insert the citation, type the reference ID of the item surrounded by double curly-brackets. For example, if I have a reference with ID #136, I would include it as {{136}}
3. Do not include page numbers in the double brackets, they are lost when the paper is formatted by RefWorks. For these, you might just as easily type the properly formatted APA citation right there instead or place the page number outside of the brackets. Either way, you will need to do some cleanup after the paper is formatted.

The real power of this approach is not so much to get the in-text citations in place but to do both those and the reference section (bibliography) at the end of the paper at the same time. That way, the computer keeps track for you of what items were actually used in the document and puts them in.

Note: there is another way to do this, but it looks complicated and requires a download of a helper program, so I'm skipping it for now. Personally, I use the above system and find it works well for me.

Create Bibliography

If you inserted in-text citation codes:

1. Save and close the document in your word processor. Word, in particular, is fussy about not allowing another program to open a document if it is already open in Word, and it will give odd error messages.
2. Open RefWorks (log in, etc.)
3. Click the "Bibliography" tab
4. Check to be sure that the output style is correct. If it is not, use the drop down menu to select the correct one
5. Click the circle next to the option "Format Paper and Bibliography"
6. Click the "Browse" button and select the paper to format. You may need to navigate to it.
7. Once you return to RefWorks page and the document name is in the field before "Browse", click the button "Create Bibliography"
8. Wait
9. My download never begins automatically, so you may need to click the link "Download it"
10. Let it save the document to disk
11. Find the formatted document. It will start with "Final-" to distinguish it from the original document you created.
12. Check the document. These programs are good, but they are not yet perfect!

If you did not do in-text citation codes:

1. Open RefWorks (log in, etc.)
2. Click the "Bibliography" tab
3. Check to be sure that the output style is correct. If it is not, use the drop down menu to select the correct one
4. Click the circle next to "Format a Bibliography from a List of References"
5. Choose the file type to create
6. Choose what to include
   • All references will include everything you have in the database, which might be appropriate if you used them all
   • My list, which you can create on the main references page
   • References from a particular folder
7. Click the "Create Bibliography" button
8. Wait
9. My download never begins automatically, so you may need to click the link "Download it"
10. Let it save the document to disk
11. Find the formatted document. It will start with "Final-" to distinguish it from the original document you created.
12. Check the document. These programs are good, but they are not yet perfect!

Keep Backups

Since this database is stored at another company's location, it is a very good idea to keep your own backups. I recommend you run them weekly.

To run a backup of your database:

1. Open RefWorks (log in, etc.)
2. Click the "References" tab
3. Select "Backup/Restore
4. Click the circle in front of "Backup"
5. Click the button "Perform Backup"
6. Wait
7. Click the link "click here to save your backup file"
8. Let it save to the disk

Other Choices

Note: none of these is perfect. I have found little errors or oddities with all of them, but in general, any one of them will help make the process easier, leaving you with minimal editing.

	RefWorks	Endnote	Bookends
Operating System	Any	Windows (PC) and Macintosh	Macintosh
Cost	Free to UMD students, staff, and faculty	Endnote 8: $99.99 (academic)	$69
Access	Internet	Install on computer	Install on computer
Documents	Links to URLs only	Can hold a link to an electronic document stored your computer or a URL to a web site
Annoyances	Can't include page numbers in a insert code; occasionally puts a period in between title and year for a in-text citation (vs. the comma); does not alphabetize the bibliography	Cannot capitalize the name of the document correctly unless you enter it that way in Endnote (Endnote 7);
Nice features	You can organize your references into folders	Keeps track of author names and descriptors to help keep your entries consistent
Where to get	Library web site	Computer corner	www.sonnysoftware.com