[Coil-l] Refworks

[Jones, Elizabeth]

Hi everyone,

We are trying to convince our director to purchase Refworks for the university, but there was a discussion on collibs that she saw and several people said that they do not recommend for 1st and 2nd year students.  Some of the reasoning was that they write shorter papers and the learning curve for Refworks is not worth it if you are only using 3-5 sources.  Also some people thought that in the beginning you should focus on teaching critical thinking and analysis vs. citation.  Another comment was concerning the fact that Refworks is not 100% reliable and if you teach students to rely on it too soon before you have taught them to create citations on their own then a) they tend to not check the citation and assume the software is correct and b) they don't know what to do when the software malfunctions and the citations are not correct.

Long story short...Any of you out there have this software at your institutions?  Can you give me your thoughts and opinions?  Statistics on use would be much appreciated!

Elizabeth (Beth) Jones, MLIS
Serials/Gov Docs/Systems Librarian
Oklahoma City University
Dulaney-Browne Library
(405) 208-5846
ejones at okcu.edu

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