Bibliographic Referencing Software

Most bibliographic software allows you to:

• Create bibliographic records for your citations, either by manual entry or electronically, mainly from databases and library catalogues.
• Manage this data by allowing the addition of personal notes, attachments and sorting of records.
• Link to word processing documents to insert in-text or footnote citations and construct bibliographies.
• Access a range of citation styles.
• Access a range of format types (book, journal article, book chapter).

Macquarie University has a licence for two bibliographic management software packages:

•  EndNote

•  Mendeley

This guide provides information about these applications and other free software that has similar functionality.

Look at the information given for each of the software products and particularly note any information under Issues and Technical information that may pertain to your situation. Check information under the software description and then look at the support guides for specific products before deciding on the software you wish to use.

A citation provides information needed to locate a book, journal article or other resource. These are usually listed in a bibliography, index or database.

Book: Generally a book citation would include author, title, place of publication, publisher and date of publication.

Journal article: Generally, a journal article citation will include author, title of the article, title of the journal in which the article appeared, volume number, issue number, date of publication and pages on which the article appeared.

Different disciplines may use different forms or styles to cite references. These are called citation styles.

The Referencing guide provides examples of different citation styles.