A few years ago, I took two quick polls. First, I asked the 50+ students in our preservice teacher program how many had used Google Scholar: 50 of 52. About a week later, I asked a group of librarians, and the statistics were almost a complete reverse: only a handful of the group had used it. Wow – that’s some disconnect, eh?
In the past couple of weeks, Google Scholar has added an auto-citation feature into its search results. Check out the link below or the original post on the Google Scholar blog.
Cite from search results – Google Scholar Blog via kwout
One of my favorite parts of the post is the closing statement by software engineer James Connor:
We hope that simplifying the chore of citation formatting will let you focus on what you really want to be working on: writing a great paper!
It’s a good reminder to keep the focus on why we cite, not the mechanics.
Thoughts?