NoodleTools: This is one of my favorites AND we have a school account which gives you lots of things you won't get with the free account. There is a new notecard feature which I haven’t fully explored but which looks quite useful. You can record, organize and synthesize information using online notecards and then format your bibliography in MLA, APA, or Chicago/Turabian style. We have a school account which will allow you to register and get access to all the best features.  Use the database login sheet that was sent home for password information.

 

BibMe:  BibMe is one of the easiest citation apps out there. It lets you search by ISBN, title, or author. You can format your citation for books, journals, newspapers, periodicals, the web, whatever you need. It has an autofill function to save time. BibMe will format your bibliography for MLA, APA, Chicago or Turabian, then export it all to Microsoft Word for easy insertion into a research paper.

 

Word 2007: While not everybody has a copy of Word 2007, the folks that do don’t even have to leave their word processor to generate a professional-looking bibliography. If you don’t use Word, check out the next apps.

 

OttoBib:  If you know a book’s ISBN number, that’s all you need for OttoBib to build a citation for you in the format you need. If you don’t, or if you’re citing something that’s not a book, you’ll need to find another application.

 

EasyBib: EasyBib goes far beyond the usual assortment of sources. It lets you easily cite federal testimony, photographs, emails, patents, paintings, executive orders, and literally dozens more types of documents. Unless you’re trying to cite something scrawled on the back of a napkin at Chili’s, Easybib has you covered. It too lets you search by ISBN. EasyBib only cites MLA format for free — if you’re writing in APA or Chicago style, you’ll have to pay up nine bucks per year, which isn’t a lot, but you can find other apps to cite those formats for free.

 

Citation Machine: Though you can’t search by ISBN, that’s about the only thing Citation Machine doesn’t do. Just enter basic info like the title, author, publisher, type of work, all that stuff, and Citation Machine will give you your citation in whatever format you require. It’s simple, straightforward, and free.

 

Zotero:   A free Firefox extension to help you collect, manage, and cite your research sources. It lives right where you do your work—in the web browser itself. Cites to Word and Open Office. I haven’t tried this one myself but I’m guessing it may be popular for Mac users! 

 

Adapted in part from Bill Ferris’ “Top 5 Citation Applications.” July 16, 2009. http://instructify.com/2009/07/16/top-5-citation-applications/.