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Research Guides

Citing Sources / Create Your Bibliography

Why and how we cite sources in academic writing. The guide includes links to many helpful online tutorials, style guides, and related documents to help you understand citation practice, and build correct citations for your bibliography.

Pick a research-tracking method

Keep track of what you learn from the sources that you use for your writing assignments.

The low-tech way to keep track of your research sources is to use 3x5 or 4x6 index cards.  Use one card per source consulted. 

Note the source's bibliographic information on the top of the card so you'll have the information ready when you need to cite the source in your bibliography.  Make your notes on the remaining space on the card. 

We also found some great suggestions for keeping track of your work with sources from UCLA's tutorial Avoiding Disaster: Eddie Gets Organized!


Research Logs - Templates and Tools

You can make a research template using any word processing program that uses tables.  Here are some ideas of sample templates to track your research: