Picture this: your web browser is full of tabs, one for each article you’ve found. There’s a Google Doc with hastily copied and pasted citations of more sources. Your inbox is full of even MORE sources you’ve emailed yourself. Your grasp of reality is slowly slipping away as you get swept up in a Citation Cyclone. How do you end this insanity?!

Good news for you — there are a lot of citation management resources out there! The one we’ll talk about here is the temporary folder found on the library.

Here’s how you find it:

Perform QuickSearch of the library catalog. Next to each result, you’ll see a little folder icon.

Click this button to add a source to a temporary folder. Your list of potential sources will all go to the same temporary folder. You can find the temporary folder in the upper right hand corner of the screen.

NOTE THE WORD TEMPORARY. The contents of this folder do not stay forever. You’ll eventually want to export those sources to add them to your bibliography. You have a few choices here.

You can click “Export To…” to send your sources to a citation tool. Find out more about citation tools here.  These will help you with styling and formatting your citations correctly. You can also print your list of sources or email them to yourself to follow up on later.

Stay sane, stay safe, and try out the temporary folder today!