Russell Hall
Teachers College, Columbia University
525 West 120th Street
New York, NY 10027
Russell Hall. Library. Curriculum Reading Room (Floor 5). Historical Photographs of Teachers College. Courtesy of Gottesman Libraries.
Becca Gates, Research and Instruction Librarian
A reference manager is a software that records, manages, and exports reference information for a researcher's information sources. They also have PDF-reading and note-taking functionalities that can simplify a research workflow. Reference managers can also be called bibliographic managers or citation managers.
The three most popular reference managers are Zotero, EndNote, and Mendeley.
All three of these software have the ability to:
Check out the comparison table on this page to see what makes each citation software stand out. Then, explore the pages for each software to learn details on how to download and use the program.
Image credit: University of Sussex
Zotero | EndNote | Mendeley | |
Details | Free (pay for more storage) | Free with Columbia institutional credentials | Free (pay for more storage) |
What makes it stand out |
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Drawbacks |
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Use if... | you value open source principles in software and want to retain control of your citation data. | you want a powerful tool that is integrated with the rest of your research ecosystem and can handle large amounts of citations. | you are looking for a clean and sleek pdf-reading experience with an easy-to-use interface. |