When instructors ask you to write in a particular "style," they usually do not mean writing style. They are referring to the standardized editorial style researchers in your discipline have adopted to present written material in the field. This editorial style consists of rules or guidelines that a researcher observes to ensure clear and consistent presentation of written material. The field of English Literature commonly uses either Chicago style or MLA format citations. Instructors will usually indicate which citation style they would like followed for a given paper or assignment. If your instructor has not specified a particular style, be sure to ask which one to use.

Understanding what copyright is, which information is covered by copyright, and how you can fairly use copyrighted information, is an essential skill when doing and publishing research. To help you out, here are a few handy tools:

• Copyright Resources Research Guide
• Is it Protected by Copyright?
• Fair Use for Nonfiction Authors
• Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for Poetry
• Working with Publishers and Open Access (Loyola eCommons)

Zotero, an open source citation management system, helps researchers collect, organize, cite, and share their research. Graduate-level researchers anticipating work on related themes make best use of citation management when they start early and integrate their citation management system into their research practices and habits. Concentrate on developing and maintaining a library of one's prospective sources and past-used ones; the researcher who dies has a rich resource of existing source material at the outset of new projects and it will continue to grow thereafter.

Also use Zotero to maintain lists of books from classes and seminars in order to compile them into reading lists for comprehensive exams or for other future uses. Journal articles, films, and other source types, digital and analog, could also appear in these lists.

The citations you save in Zotero belong to you, allowing you to easily transition your academic work at Loyola University Chicago to another university and to other libraries.

• Zotero Quick Start Guide

  Essential information and how-to videos created by Zotero for new users.

• Zotero Tutorial Library

  Collected and topically-organized tutorials created by actual users to help others; selected for inclusion here by Zotero.

• Zotero download