Library Tips & Tricks for Graduate & Doctoral Students

The Online Writing Lab (OWL) at Purdue University houses writing resources and instructional material, and we provide these as a free service of the Writing Lab at Purdue. Students, members of the community, and users worldwide will find information to assist with many writing projects.

RefWorks is a powerful online research management, writing and collaboration tool designed to help researchers at all levels easily gather, organize, store and share all types of information and to instantly generate citations and bibliographies. If you are creating an account from off-campus you will need to enter the School Code RWWidenerLS.

Zotero is a free, easy-to-use tool to help you
collect, organize, cite, and share research. Zotero helps you organize your research any way you want. You can sort items into collections and tag them with keywords. Or create saved searches that automatically fill with relevant materials as you work. Zotero instantly creates references and bibliographies for any text editor, and directly inside Word, LibreOffice, and Google Docs. With support for over 9,000 citation styles, you can format your work to match any style guide or publication.

The Writing Center provides one-on-one instruction for any writing assignment, regardless of the course. Instruction is designed to deal with individual needs. Faculty at the center assist with selecting research topics, outlining, editing, revising, and brainstorming. Instruction is free and scheduled at the student’s convenience. Students may drop in or schedule appointments for a later date.