A guide to saving citations and creating bibliographies from the State Library catalogue.
The State Library Victoria's catalogue has several options for saving citations and records.
You can:
Most of our subscription databases will also provide a way to save citations for the resources that you find within them.
If you're not quite ready to cite your work but you still want to save the resources that you have found in the catalogue, you can do one of the following:
All records in the State Library catalogue include the option to copy and save a citation for that item.
To save a citation for any record, click the title to open the record in the full detail view and select Citation from the Save as menu.
This will open up a panel with the option to select from one of four preconfigured citation styles: either APA (6th or 7th edition), Chicago/Turabian (16th edition), Harvard (Author-Date) or MLA (7th or 8th editions) (refer to the Citation styles tab for information on each of these options). Simply select the style you require and click the 'Copy the citation to clipboard' button; you can then paste the citation into the application of your choice.
Remember to check the resulting citation for accuracy before using in your work!
The State Library catalogue currently supports exporting citations to four popular online citation management tools: EasyBib, EndNote Web, RefWorks and Mendeley. You can find out more about each tool on the Citation Management Tools page of this guide.
You can push citations directly to these tools, or you can export the citations in RIS format for subsequent importing into other tools.
You can also choose to export the citation in Excel format for your own use.
To export a citation for a catalogue record to any of the supported citation management tools, click the title to open the record in the full detail view and select the appropriate option from the Save as menu.
A new window will open for your chosen citation manager (you may be required to log in or create an account if you haven't already done so); follow the instructions to complete your citation export.
You can also export multiple records from the catalogue to a citation management tool.
From the results page, select the checkboxes on the left-hand side of all of the records that you wish to save, then select the ellipses (...) from the top bar to open the menu and export to your chosen tool.
You can also export multiple records directly from your Favourites when you are signed in to the catalogue.
RIS is a plain text file format that uses a standardised set of tags developed by Research Information Systems, Inc to allow citation management programs to import and exchange data.
The RIS file format is supported by the majority of citation management tools currently available, so you can use this option to export citations from the State Library catalogue into desktop tools such Citavi, Mendeley, Zotero, or the desktop version of EndNote. The format is also compatible with online citation managers such as EasyBib, EndNote Web, Mendeley Web and RefWorks.
You can export RIS files for single citations, a group of results, or bulk export a large set of citations.
Select Export RIS, choose an Encoding (see below), and Download the file.
SLV recommends saving your RIS files in UTF-8 encoding, if this is supported by your citation management software. This is the dominant text encoding online across the majority of the world, and results in the fewest errors with international languages. If you do not choose an encoding, UTF-8 will download as default.
We have three other encodings to choose from, which may be more relevant to you depending on the specificities of your work, or if UTF-8 is not supported by your citation management software.
You can export bulk search results from the catalogue (up to a maximum of 5,000) by selecting the EXPORT ALL RESULTS option that appears above the listed results when one or more records is selected.
Note that you will need to be logged in to the catalogue with your Library account to use the bulk export; if you are not yet a member, you can sign up for a free Access membership online.
The bulk export function includes two format options:
Once you've selected the format, enter the email address to which you want the records sent, add an optional note, and then click Send. If the email doesn't arrive within around 10 minutes, please check your Spam or Junk folder.
Please note that Bulk Export is not currently available on mobile devices.
SLV subscribes to a range of databases which you can use for your research. These will include primary sources, academic articles, and much more. You can access our database from our A-Z Databases page.
All of the databases will work a little differently, but they will all give you ways of saving, copying, sharing, or exporting the sources that you find so you can reference them in your work or find them again later.
You will notice that many of the options are similar to those offered by the SLV catalogue, mentioned on this page.
Here we can see the main options in ProQuest:
Or select All Options to see more options, including exporting to a citation manager or Excel.
Below we see the options in Informit, which are a little different:
Export Citations lets you both export as a RIS file, or copy the citation in one of four styles. There is no functionality to push directly to a citation manager, but you can use the RIS file to save to the citation manager of your choice. The option to copy the hyperlink is under the Share option.
You will find that all databases have slightly different menu options, so click on a few buttons and explore them all to see what it available.
The SLV catalogue allows you to save or share records in a number of ways. This is useful for keeping your work organised, and finding interesting resources again. You can then generate citations for them, or export to a citation tool, when you are ready.
If you are signed in to the catalogue using your SLV account, select the pin icon next to any record to save it to My Favourites.
For help saving records and using labels to organise them, see our catalogue Help page: Saving and organising records.
A persistent link is the best way to find an item again in the catalogue. Links copied from the search bar during a complex search may contain information that will change over time, however a persistent link should always take you back directly to the item itself.
Open the record, select the Persistent Link icon in the Send To menue, and then copy the permalink to your clipboard.
You can also print, email or share the catalogue metadata of any of the items that you are interested in and view them later. You do not need to be signed in as a registered Library user.
In the Send To menu, select either:
