Tuesday, February 7, 2012

App of the Month - Easybib

Since all incoming freshmen receive iPads at Cumberland University, the library has been looking for apps that can be helpful (and some fun) to students in their everyday (college) lives.  Whatever your major is, you can count on a couple of things: studying and writing papers!  There is no way you can bypass these and have a successful (and passing) college career.

This month the library is focusing on the writing papers aspect of college.  No, the library is not going to write your paper for you, so don't even ask!  But what we can show you is an app that helps with works cited in papers. The app that the Vise Library recommends is Easybib.  It helps with any format that you need citations for, whether it is APA, MLA, or Chicago format.   Plus it's free, which is always exciting when you are in college!

Easybib has a search feature where you can search for a particular book you are looking to cite. Easybib also has a scan feature as well.  Say for instance you are in the Vise Library and see a book that is useful to a paper you are writing, just grab your iPad (or other iPod) device and scan the barcode on the back of the book!  It's that easy!  

The picture below shows the search feature:

Here is a picture of the the actual citation after selecting the book.  As you can see this citation has been selected for MLA format.

Another great feature Easybib has is an email citation button.  If you don't have your paper in front of you just click the "email citation" button (which you can see in the previous picture in the bottom right hand corner).  Once you do that an email is generated with the citation and you can select who you want to send the email to.  

Here is showing the email citation feature after clicking the button :

If you do not have a device that allows you to get this app don't sweat it!  You can simply go to
www.easybib.com and use all of their great features on their website! The Easybib website also helps with citing not only books, but also journals, newspapers, websites, etc.  

Hopefully this app helps to take off some of the stress for Cumberland students when it comes to citing papers.  Check back next month for another recommendation!

No comments:

Post a Comment