Users and citation management tools: use and support

As the number of citation management tools including Refworks and EndNote increased in recent years, academic libraries struggle to remain on top of new developments and support all of the tools used by their users. This paper seeks to address these issues.

A librarian at the University of Illinois surveyed graduate students and faculty about which tools they use, reasons for tool adoption, features that influence adoption, and support they expect from their library.

The results highlight that many users still use older tools including EndNote and RefWorks, but do have interests for and reasons to use new tools including Zotero and Mendeley and may not need as much library support as librarians believe.

This is the first research paper on citation management use and can influence what products libraries use and the support they offer.