EndNote is a citation management tool that is available for free to all Texas State University faculty, staff, and students. Find out more about how to get the EndNote software later in the module.

A citation manager is a tool that helps researchers collect and organize the information they find as they do their research. As you search the library's catalog and databases and find articles, books, and more that you want to cite in your papers, you can save them in your citation manager so that you have a record of what you found and where you found it. This will make creating a bibliography much easier! Your citation manager can also help you generate that bibliography automatically in a variety of citation styles.

This course focuses on the basic functions of EndNote Desktop and EndNote Web. The two versions work together so you can access your library wherever you are. After you download the EndNote software, it is yours to keep and use, even after you leave the university. However, you would no longer be able to download major version upgrades for free. It is possible to pay for a personal subscription to EndNote if you are no longer affiliated with the university, so you can get the upgrades that way.

The software download also includes a plugin for Microsoft Word called Cite While You Write, which connects your Word documents to your EndNote library and allows for quick and easy bibliography creation.