UQ offers students award winning referencing support

I hated referencing when I first started university. It was a process I was not familiar with and the very mention of it made me yawn.

My assignment would be ready to go the night before submission. Or so I led myself to believe. In reality I knew that I would have to trawl through my work and fix up the referencing or be accused of intellectual plagiarism.

It was not until third year that I was introduced to EndNote. I never actually mastered the program but it shone a light and caused a stir within me, henceforth I became superbly diligent with referencing.

Last week I spoke to Noela Yates, e-learning coordinator of The University of Queensland (UQ). I was surprised to hear how passionate she and the rest of her team are about educating students about programs like EndNote and Refworks. Her passion has not remained unnoticed. In August this year UQ Library won the Australian Learning and Teaching Citation in recognition of the referencing support they provide to students.

I admitted to Noela that a library assistant had tried to teach my history class EndNote but to no personal prevail. She laughed and asked how long the session was. I stated that it would have been perhaps an hour, and she said that it was hardly possible to gain competency with EndNote within that timeframe.

She does however, encourage all current undergraduate and postgraduate students of UQ to book in for a class. She says the major reaction of students after they finally stumble over the classes is “why didn’t I find out about this earlier.” She is particularly conscious that the modern student is time-poor, often working 25 hours a week in part-time work; she therefore would love for as many students as possible to find out about the time saving effects of referencing software.

UQ Library offers both EndNote and Refworks because each program, although similar has slightly distinct advantages and disadvantages. Refworks is, according to Yates “marginally easier to use” especially because it has a web presence and can be logged into much like a social networking site. While EndNote, favoured by biomedical researchers, deals better with long article and journal titles.

For more information visit http://www.library.uq.edu.au/services/referencing.html