United Lutheran Seminary Writing Center: Citing Your Research

There are several useful, freely-available tools to help you manage your research projects. If you start using one of these tools early in your studies, they will become invaluable when it's time to write your dissertation.

• Zotero  is freely-available web app and desktop software for all stages of your research. It allows you to group your references and downloaded articles around your own topic areas with your own notes so that you can then come back use them in your projects. 
• Microsoft Office has tools integrated in Word that allows you to cite articles and build a bibliography. DO NOT USE MICROSOFT's BIBLIOGRAPHY, AUTOMATIC CITATION, OR TABLE OF CONTENTS BUILDING TOOLS. They are inaccurate and are near impossible to resolve without re-typing every single footnote, bibliography entry, and table of contents page manually..
• eTurabian  from Eksendia offers easy fill-in forms for accurately formatting footnotes.

While these tools can simplify some of your work, it's still important for you to know how cite, format, and build a bibliography manually, as these tools will make mistakes, particularly when they import citations into the database and when presenting the final format in Microsoft Word. 

We recommend that you purchase the 7th edition (or newer) of A Manual for Writers of Term Papers, Theses, and Dissertations (Turabian) at the beginning of your studies at ULS so that you can refer to it every time you are completing a research paper.

If you need to cite something more complex, you can also refer to Chicago Manual of Style Online , as Turabian is a simplified version of Chicago.  

• Chicago Manual of Style Online  
   
• Purdue OWL   offers tips on formatting your citations.
   
• SBL Handbook of Style    abbreviations are available at this link.
   
• KnightCite Citation Service A free service maintained by Hekman Library at Calvin College, this site is a good resource for making bibliographies. 
   
• Stanford Copyright and Fair Use Policies Stanford's website for information about copyright and fair use. This information can help you determine what can be considered fair use. 

Zotero is an open source citation management software that can be very helpful in keeping track of your sources.