It’s that time of year. Schools and universities are nearing the end of the semester (or school year), finals and papers are due, and stress is a thing. During all this stress, there’s one thing that’s not in short supply. Yes, on college campuses there’s never a shortage of sermons about citing your sources.

What’s funny about citations is how many students get caught cheating and plagiarizing because they’re undereducated about how many tools are available to help them.

Some of them just go to Son of Citation or EasyBib, online generators that typically create more problems than they actually help. The savvier students will use programs like End Note or Zotero, both of which are fantastic and can truly help track your sources and cite those works.

Other students get in trouble because, despite their teacher’s sermons, they underutilize the library. If they’d use the library like their professors asked, they’d probably learn a multitude of small tips and tricks to help them tackle sources and citations. So what does any of this preaching about stress and the end of the year have to do with genealogy and genealogists?

Well, if you’re like those students, and need some help crafting a quick citation, I’ll show you one of the tricks I show my students. Are you ready?

Did you know that most library catalogs will create citations for you? All you need to do is look for the proper icons that will lead you to the promised land. They typically say something profound like “cite” on them, and you can grab what you need in seconds.

Here’s what it looks like on the Millsaps College Catalog.

Once you click that cite button, a smaller window emerges. It looks like this.

You can then select your citation style. It’s under the top arrow I’ve drawn on the second image. Once you select your preferred style, the citation will generate inside the gray window beneath your selection field. You can see it there with the middle arrow. The bottom arrow shows you where you can press a button to copy the citation. Then, “Bam!” you’re ready to paste it into your work.

To be fair, some public libraries with smaller budgets might not have a citation generator of this sort in their catalog. But many of them do. You’ll find generators like this in WorldCat, almost every academic library, and even inside databases that provide articles.

 I find myself grabbing citations all the time from the catalog. If for some reason I’ve returned a book to the library without creating a citation, I can always go back to the catalog and get one in minutes.

I’m in the camp that believes you should take the time to learn how to handcraft citations so you can truly understand how to utilize them. However, I also recognize that there are plenty of times when a quick generator like this is the way to go.

Wherever you stand on citations, please know there’s plenty of help out there for you to cite your sources without stressing too hard. I hope this one tip is helpful for your work. So go to genealogists! Cite your work! Revel in them!

Have fun and join us for our summer programming. I’ll see you here next week.