Book Wrangling, in an organized fashion

Greetings! Only 12 more days before classes begin! What is your Art Librarian up to?

Today, book wrangling. Well, citation wrangling to be more specific. I finished up a journal article today and painlessly, yes, painlessly, created a bibliography with Refworks. The university now has a campus subscription to Refworks, and it is well worth you time to view the tutorials then get started on exporting or creating citations.

There goes the library jargon! Export! Citations! What does it all mean!

Simply put, once you open your account, you can add citations individually or export them from a database (have you been noticing those export option buttons) to create your own personal online bibliography. You can put the citations into folders, annotate your entries, and be prompted to include fields necessary to particular citation styles.

I was inspired to write this post by the mention of LibraryThing on another website I was viewing today, and here pause to muse on Refworks vs. Library Thing.

Disclaimer: I have used Refworks; I have not used LibraryThing.

One of the problems I see with technology is that one can become disorganized by trying to be organized in too many places. Why should I maintain a personal bibliography in two places? I favor Refworks because it also catalogs items besides books (monographs, as we like to say in libraryland) and because it will export them in a literally hundreds of citation styles.

Do check out Refworks--it is best to access it from the library webpage link so you will be recoganized as an SJSU subscriber.

Can you change my mind about LibraryThing? I invite your responses.