ruruminations – cnàmh na cìr – chewing the cud

Having tried out a number of the tools I previously posted tools to I can now give recommendations.

The best overall system is Zotero.  This installs as an add on of Firefox (web browser) but also integrates with OpenOffice (not sure about Word).  All these items of software are free.  Zotero is a particularly powerful, allowing for a more comprehensive selection of citation styles than any other free software and more even than many of the proprietary software.

The Scholar’s Aid Lite software is also very good but it lacks the power of Zotero in terms of information harvesting from internet sources.  Also it is limited in terms of the citation styles that can be used, unless of course you wish to fork out for the full version of the software.

The classic academic citation software pasckages Refworks and Endnote are astronpmically priced though very powerful in functionality.  These are not really an option for any but the exceedingly wealthy individual or for institutions.

If your use is more scientific the Connotea is probably the software for the job, but it is a free option which may meet your requirements for other types of papers.

For those who would prefer not to install any extra software and are only going to be doing limited referencing/bibliographies then Bibme is a bery useful web-application.