Citation Management Made Easy: RefWorks, now including RefShare
As noted in past issues of News U Can Use, the Library has licensed RefWorks, making it available without individual charge to all York faculty, students, and staff. RefWorks is an effective tool for managing bibliographic data, allowing users to automatically import citations from many of the Library's periodical indexes, store and edit citations, create bibliographies in many citation styles, and to add references to an essay during the writing process.
RefShare
Many improvements and enhancements have been made to RefWorks recently. The biggest enhancement is the addition of the RefShare module to RefWorks. RefShare allows RefWorks users to make the contents of a RefWorks folder or entire database available to others. When you choose to share all or some of the citations in your RefWorks account, a webpage is automatically created that contains these shared citations.
The link to that webpage can be given to colleagues or students via e-mail or can be embedded in a web site (for example, a WebCT page). Any recipients of this link will be able to access your shared RefWorks content, even if they don’t have a RefWorks account. This feature provides an easy way to share the results of bibliographic research with others or to post reading lists on the web for students. The data contained in your RefWorks account remains completely secure; nobody accessing shared content will be able to edit or delete the citations and you can choose to revoke the sharing of content at any time. The Libraries will also be launching a Shared Area Page where you can choose to post a link to shared content to make it available to the wider York University community.
Other recent improvements and enhancements to RefWorks
Recent improvements/enhancements to RefWorks include
activation of the Find It@York feature in RefWorks, allowing users to link from a citation in RefWorks to available online full-text or to York University Libraries' print holdings
improved functionality for Mac users
support for new types of bibliographic entities such as legal and government materials, unpublished materials and grants
More Information
For frequently updated information on RefWorks enhancements, see New Release Notes
Information on using RefWorks or setting up an account can be found on the Libraries RefWorks pages
RefWorks Workshops
Coming in October: workshops on how to use RefWorks
