Studying Online;Succeeding through Distance Learning at University

86 Studying online 
A better way of assembling references is to use reference software. 
Tere are two very popular methods of storing all your references. 
One is called Mendeley, and the other is Zotero. Tey both work 
in similar ways, so it is a subjective decision as to which one you 
prefer. Personally, I like Zotero, and all of the references for this 
book were compiled in it. However, I have lecturer colleagues at 
university who prefer Mendeley and can’t get to grips with Zotero. 
It doesn’t matter; choose one and use it. 
Te programs have web browser extensions so that when you are 
reading a source online, you can click on the button and add the 
source to your list, fling it appropriately according to the work you 
are doing. Tese extensions store all the relevant details, such as 
year of publication, author’s name, the title of the paper, the name 
of the journal, and so on. When you need to produce your list of 
references at the end of your assignment, all you then do is press 
the appropriate menu option in Zotero or Mendeley, and your fully 
formatted reference list is created. You only need to tell it which 
referencing format you are using, and the program does all the hard 
work, saving you a great deal of time. For the reference list at the 
end of this chapter, all I had to do in Zotero was press the “Create 
Bibliography” option, confrm that I wanted to use the “Harvard” 
style of referencing and then click the OK button. I didn’t have to 
concern myself as to which items were in italics, where the brackets 
went, or the order of each of the items. Zotero did all the work for 
me, saving me time and ensuring the formatting was correct. Stu-
dents can lose marks if their referencing is incorrect, so a program 
like Zotero or Mendeley can ensure you get higher scores. 
Some universities use a diferent system called Cite Tem Right. 
Tis is a website that accompanies a book of the same name (Pears 
and Shields, 2019). Universities can subscribe to the system, and 
you would access this through your VLE. Te system does not 
store references for you, though. It merely allows you to check that 
you have created the references correctly according to the format 
required by your discipline and faculty. Even if your university 
does subscribe to this, I would still recommend getting something 
like Zotero or Mendeley as you will be able to store and organise 
your references, something you cannot do at Cite Tem Right. 

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