Get Help Citing Sources and Avoiding Plagiarism

Librarians are here to help you “learn the skills of scholarship and the expectations of academic honesty” (“Academic Misconduct,” CSB and SJU Academic Catalog).

Contact a librarian if you have questions about when or how to cite your sources or make an appointment with a Writing Center tutor for help paraphrasing others' ideas and organizing your supporting evidence. You can also review our Student Resources for Avoiding Plagiarism guide.

We have some citation tips for you below, based on whether you plan to 1) use software to manage your citations or 2) create and keep track of your citations on your own.

1. If you would like to use software to manage your citations, try EndNote.

EndNote is a bibliographic citation manager; it keeps track of your citations and creates a bibliography for you. EndNote is especially useful for larger research projects where you’re citing many different sources. EndNote also includes the Cite-While-You-Write plugin to easily create in-text citations within Microsoft Word. Schedule a library research appointment to get one-on-one assistance with EndNote.

(Note: If you use a different citation manager like BibTex, Easybib, Mendeley, or Zotero, we can try to troubleshoot some basic questions but may not be able to provide the same level of support as we do with EndNote.)

2. If you want to manage references manually, try:

The "Cite" Feature: The CSB and SJU Libraries’ catalog and many journal databases include a “Cite” feature that lets you select a citation style and then copy and paste a computer-generated citation into your bibliography. Further instructions are available here.

Other Citation Style Resources: Below the style guide cover images on this page we've included links to recommended resources for these four common citation styles: APA, Chicago, CSE, and MLA. The CSB and SJU Libraries have print (and when available, online or eBook) copies of official style guides. We also recommend the Purdue OWL website for its extensive citation guidelines and examples.

Citing Sources in Multimedia Projects

Plagiarism, copyright, and citation are just as important when creating multimedia as when you are writing a paper. Video, podcasts, online digital exhibits, and more all have the same requirements as a written paper to cite sources and make sure you aren't incorrectly using something that is protected by copyright. On our Video in the Curriculum and Podcasting and Audio in the Curriculum pages we have resources to help you think through these topics, such as:

Please contact a librarian or Instructional Technology Specialist with questions!