before you • We all stand on the shoulders of giants! • Convenience for those who come after you! • Credit (especially relevant in workplace assessment) • I’m academic staff, not faculty, so I am not assessed on how often my publications are cited. (I am assessed on whether I produce publications!) • iSchool faculty are assessed on this in tenure and promotion processes. (Not all by itself, of course! But still.) So is the iSchool as a whole. • If you end up working in a tenure environment, future academic librarians or full-time iSchool instructors/faculty… you could be too! • Conversation, like @-ing somebody on social media. “Hi, I’m quoting/commenting on this thing you wrote.”
link?” I’m with you… but no. • In scholarly and professional writing, citation is a highly rule-driven activity. • Irritatingly, there are lots of different sets of rules citation styles! • When my prior research-collaboration group discussed where we wanted to publish our results, “what’s that journal’s citation style?” is actually one of the questions we asked! • Don’t try to cite by hand. You will hate yourself. And us! And scholarly communication! • Use Zotero. USE ZOTERO. USE ZOTERO!!!!!
Installing a browser plugin, the “Zotero Connector.” • For the fi rst step, https://www.zotero.org/support/ installation should have you covered. • For the second, go to your browser’s add-on repository / web store and search for Zotero.
use the in-browser Zotero Connector button to save stuff to Zotero unless Zotero is running. • You also can’t put citations in a document unless Zotero is running. • So when you’re working on an iSchool assignment involving citations, get in the habit of starting Zotero fi rst! • Honestly… I have it in my work Mac’s “Login Items” preferences, so it starts up whenever I reboot. • I am a GIANT NERD, however. You don’t have to do this. In case it helps, though…
it’s wretched. • (This isn’t Zotero’s fault — it’s a question of how nicely the website plays with Zotero, really.) • ALWAYS check news stories and blog/social media posts you put into Zotero. • Books and journal articles usually work better. Not always, but usually. • Zotero calls a lot of things a “Web Page” that are actually reports, news stories, journal articles… • It matters because citation styles treat these differently! • Always fi x this mistake when you see it! • Check capitalization in titles. This is style-dependent! Some styles want Title Case For Everything. Others don’t.
on this earth that doesn’t want you to put the date (of publication, of appearance, whatever) into your citations. • Dates are frequently hard to capture in Zotero. • So check dates. Every time. • This is the commonest reason I have to go back and fi x stuff in Zotero.
in what you’re writing. • YOU NEED TO KNOW WHICH CITATION STYLE YOU’RE USING FIRST. • LIS is a hybrid discipline! We have humanists, social scientists, and “hard” scientists. This means we use a lot of different citation styles! I’m sorry! • If you ever have me as an instructor: I DON’T CARE, pick your favorite. But other iSchool instructors care a lot, so if we don’t specify, ASK. • (In my publishing life, I’ve mostly had to use APA, but Chicago and MLA have also come up. I mostly publish social-science-y stuff, a little humanities. Mostly journal articles, a few book chapters.)
the footnote/endnote marker or in-text citation. • This, too, varies by citation style! • From the Zotero menu, pick “Add/Edit Citation.” • You will get a red-bordered search box. Search in it for what you want to cite. • Title, author, whatever — Zotero looks in everything it’s got. • Zotero should show you a list of possible citations. • Select the one you want. Wait for Zotero to insert it. Done!
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