Comments on: And Speaking Of Citations And Citing http://acrlog.org/2006/06/05/and-speaking-of-citations-and-citing/ Blogging by and for academic and research librarians Fri, 03 Sep 2010 00:48:11 -0500 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.8.4 hourly 1 By: Barbara Fister http://acrlog.org/2006/06/05/and-speaking-of-citations-and-citing/comment-page-1/#comment-6596 Barbara Fister Thu, 08 Jun 2006 12:39:12 +0000 http://acrlblog.org/2006/06/05/and-speaking-of-citations-and-citing/#comment-6596 I'm in the camp that doesn't feel learning how to "cite from scratch" has any inherent value, but I do find it's impossible to enter a citation into any of these programs without knowing what elements need to be included and how to identify those elements. In RefWorks, it's quite easy to import references, but if you happen to find a source in any other way, the form for entering your own is very complicated and actually deeply frustrating because of the way the forms are laid out (with no correlation to the frequency or order in which those elements are represented in print). The assumption is that most researchers find sources through databases, which is simply wrong. Experienced researchers find sources through other sources as often as through databases. Students also need to proofread the output and fix things - for example, capitalization and italics are always wrong for genus and species in biological citations. Teaching how to use these programs does not absolve us (or our students) of learning what citations need to look like and do. I was very pleased when a religion major told her senior seminar she loved RefWorks, but not because it formatted references. It helped her master her sources, take notes, and generally manage her personal understanding of the conversation going on around her topic. And that's the real value of these programs. I’m in the camp that doesn’t feel learning how to “cite from scratch” has any inherent value, but I do find it’s impossible to enter a citation into any of these programs without knowing what elements need to be included and how to identify those elements. In RefWorks, it’s quite easy to import references, but if you happen to find a source in any other way, the form for entering your own is very complicated and actually deeply frustrating because of the way the forms are laid out (with no correlation to the frequency or order in which those elements are represented in print). The assumption is that most researchers find sources through databases, which is simply wrong. Experienced researchers find sources through other sources as often as through databases. Students also need to proofread the output and fix things – for example, capitalization and italics are always wrong for genus and species in biological citations. Teaching how to use these programs does not absolve us (or our students) of learning what citations need to look like and do.

I was very pleased when a religion major told her senior seminar she loved RefWorks, but not because it formatted references. It helped her master her sources, take notes, and generally manage her personal understanding of the conversation going on around her topic. And that’s the real value of these programs.

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