Citation Manager Advice for Amateur Historian?

March 13, 2015 7:04 AM

I'm writing an article for my local historical society that I may expand into a book. Can anyone help me choose a citation manager?

The historical society uses Chicago footnote style for references. I'm writing in Scrivener on OS X. The vast majority of my sources are newspaper articles (from microfilm and sites like Chronicling America), but I am also citing public documents, personal interviews, etc. I've never used a citation manager before. Cheaper is better, but I am not adverse to spending money either.

posted by entropicamericana to Computers & Internet (4 answers total)

I use Zotero and it does a great job although it's a bit slow. Mendeley is also good. Both a free.
posted by ropeladder at 8:17 AM on March 13, 2015

As a historian, I use Zotero, and recommend it to others. Works great.
posted by NotMyselfRightNow at 9:13 AM on March 13, 2015

Zotero all the way. Here are some guides. There are other citation management programs but Zotero is robust and free. You can also get Google Docs to do it, sort of, with Google Scholar and the Research tool. But Zotero is built the ground up to be all about research.
posted by jadepearl at 9:27 AM on March 13, 2015

I migrated from Zotero to Mendeley. It's interesting, because Mendeley was designed more for science use, but the interface is so much cleaner and simpler (hmm, science, you're onto something) and I like the way it stores and searches PDFs.
posted by Miko at 8:18 PM on March 13, 2015