Citing your resources is a common practice for anyone engaged in research. Research is not simply a scholarly endeavor, it is also ongoing communication about an issue. By citing someone, you are placing your work in the context of that communication.
As well, think about yourself as a creator. If someone used something that you created wouldn't you want to know:
Citations are:
Citations are not just ethically and academically sound they are also practical.
Your professor may specify which citation style they wish you to use in writing your paper. We have a Citing Sources research guide that provides an overview of the different styles most commonly used.
The more research you do, the more you need to keep your resources organized. That's where bibliographic or citation managers come in. They allow you to import or manually add resources, organize them into folders or by tags, add notes or annotations, and create bibliographies.
There are two flavors of citation managers:
A subscription citation manager that the library provides is Refworks. You can use it for your entire career at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University. If you want to take the research with you, you will have to export it when you graduate and port it to another bibliographic manager.
An open source alternative is Zotero. This is freely available though it has limits on the amount of storage you can use. If you need more storage, then fees kick in.
We have guides to help you use both. There are other citation managers out there, but these are the ones we know best.