Reference Management Software (also called citation management or bibliographic management software) interface directly with library databases (and many websites) and allow scholars to collect and organize their citations and pdfs. These tools also interface with word processing software to allow users to seamlessly insert properly formatted footnotes or citations into a paper and automatically generate a properly formatted bibliography.
Most Princeton scholars use one or more of these tools, which are supported by the library:
The Library has created library guides to help you get the most out of reference management software:
Zotero is free "bibliographic citation management" software that allows you to save, collect, manage, cite, and share research sources. Zotero works inside your browser (Firefox, Safari, Chrome) to save articles that you find anywhere on the internet.
A new annotation feature also alows you to highlight and make notes on PDFs that are saved in Zotero.
Princeton University Library now supports an institutional subscription for unlimited storage (e.g., for article pdfs), authenticated with a current Princeton University email address. If you already have a Zotero account, but it’s not currently linked to your Princeton email, you can add your Princeton email in Zotero Preferences under Settings—> Account and the new unlimited storage will show up under Settings-->Storage.
