Dotting the i's and crossing the t's (aka Thing 14)

Photo credit - zappowbang, The Elements of Style

I used Endnote religiously when I worked as a Research Assistant some 7 or 8 years ago.  I thought it was fantastic.  Especially as it allowed the flexibility or customising styles to create your own.  I'm glad to see these free versions are available as it means students can use themt and feel more confident about their referencing.  Our University has recently undergone a pilot year with a new Harvard Referencing guide and will now go forward into the next academic year with the new guide being used as the style for all students studying courses/modules that require the Harvard style of referencing.  With this development in place there are further discussion taking place regarding styles used for other courses/modules.  With this in mind I hope additional steps will be taken to add the styles used in our institution to the style repositories of the free software so that students are better able to meet the requirements for their coursework.  In our department our tutors support students with referencing.  I realise that many of our students are rusty when it comes to technology, but for those that are a little more confident this free software would be ideal.  Our students struggle with more than just the mechanics of referencing of course.  So our tutors will still be busy with explaining the reason for referencing to students - where/when/why etc.  But I certainly hope to see this progress in the near future.