Maintenance

On this page, you will find a revision of some of the topics covered so far. This will be applied to a practical consideration of how you could use bibliographic software to aid in noting your research and printing reference lists and in-text citations.

Entering data

Two advantages of bibliographic software are that it prompts you to make a full record of each reference when you first enter the information; and that, by automatically formatting your references according to your required style, it helps to ensure consistency in your references and bibliographies.

However, the software is limited to formatting text only according to the order in which you have entered it into each field. It is also unlikely that it will be able to change lower-case letters to upper-case, and vice versa. Therefore you need to be aware of the requirements of your reference system and make sure that you adhere to this from the start.

To sum up:

Always

• Be consistent in your use of capitals and punctuation within fields
• Enter author names in the same format

Never

• Use punctuation that appears between fields (this will be done by the software)
• Use a carriage return when entering data (except if this is required to differentiate between two discrete pieces of information in the same field)
• Use any special characters which your software may use to identify the ends of fields, or information within a field

When using records downloaded from another database, you should remember to make sure that the use of capitals, punctuation, author names etc are consistent with the other records in your database. Remember also that online databases will contain a small number of mistakes. For your printed reference list, you must check any references downloaded from a database against the original source.

Updating your database

It is advisable to update your database regularly, this will help make sure that your references are accurate and complete.

If you have a laptop then you may be able to take this with you to the places where you are conducting your research. Otherwise you will have to decide how best to record your references for later inclusion in your database. You could, for example, print off some blank templates used by your database, or email this information to yourself.

Backing-up your database

As with any important file that you create during your research, you must keep at least one back-up copy. It is good practice to keep two, held in different locations. If you have personal space on a university server that you can save your files to, then you could keep a copy there.