Guest post by Johnamarie Macias
This time of year, many students are knee-deep in writing papers and other assignments that may require citing sources. One thing is for sure: few students enjoy creating citations in the required citation styles. However, there are tools out there that can help students understand the breakdown of citations.
Following are several online citation builders that are geared towards helping students with the main academic citation styles: American Psychological Association (APA), Modern Language Association (MLA), and Chicago Manual of Style. Even though these online citation builders have been developed to provide consistent citations with the rules set out by the citation style guides, users are ultimately responsible for the citations and should be sure to proofread them for accuracy.
The Son of Citation Machine is a great aid for writing a research papers and assignments. Established in 2000, the site lets the individual choose the citation style (MLA, APA, etc.). Next, the individual chooses the type of source: book, journal, magazine, website, and various other types. After filling out the appropriate fields based on citation standards and submitting the form, the individual conveniently gets the bibliographic citation and in-text citation.
North Carolina State University (NCSU) Libraries developed the Citation Builder. The Citation Builder does citations for books, chapters or essays from books, magazine articles, newspaper articles, journal articles, and web sites. After filling out a form, only the bibliographic citation is provided.
KnightCite is maintained by the Hekman Library at Calvin College, Michigan. The service was created in 2004 and is available to members within and outside of the Calvin community. It generates bibliographic citations for MLA, APA and the Chicago Manual of Style, and it cites a variety of materials ranging from sacred texts to cartoons.
Lastly, BibMe is a free auto-fill bibliographic generator that will format your bibliography to the main citation styles. It uses a search engine powered by World Cat to automatically produce the citation of a book and the engine also gathers basic information for other source types.
If you have other great citation apps you like to use, please comment and share them with other readers.
In closing, another reminder that it is important for students and scholars to remember that although these tools create the bibliographic citation, it is essential to review the accuracy of the citation before incorporating it into your research paper or assignment. Best of luck in your academic undertakings!
Johnamarie Macias is a Reference & Instruction Librarian at the The College of Westchester in White Plains, NY, and regularly contributes to the CW Library Blog.
