EndNote 101

There are three main ways to populate your EndNote library with references:

1. Add references manually (this may be necessary for material like datasets or archival objects)
2. Export references from bibliographic databases, including the Library Search System
3. Import PDFs (for downloaded PDFs that you already have saved to your computer)

1. Select References > "New Reference" from the top navigation menu OR click the New Reference icon, designated by a clipboard with a + mark.
2. In the appearing dialogue box, select the appropriate reference type, such as Journal Article, from the drop-down menu. (This is important because it determines the fields that will show in the citation.)
3. Enter the bibliographic information for the source.
4. Click "Save".

Tips for Manually Adding References

• Remember to enter multiple author names on separate lines (with a hard return after each name).  
• You can enter author names either last name, first name ("Smith, Jane") or first name last name ("Jane Smith").
• When entering a corporate or institutional author name like "Brown University" or "Centers for Disease Control," enter a comma after the name. This will prevent EndNote from inverting or abbreviating the name as it would for an individual authors.
• When typing in the title of an item, do not use the hard return. Instead, let EndNote wrap the text for you.

In many library-subscribed databases, you can do a search and export citation information for multiple sources from your results into EndNote. This is a lot faster and more accurate than manual entry.

1. Choose the database you want to search from the library website. Note: not all databases will create output in the same format; some databases do not provide export features.
2. Conduct a search in your database of choice.
3. Typically, you can select the citations you want to export to EndNote by clicking a checkbox next to them.
4. Look for the words "download," "export," or "send to" (usually somewhere toward the top of your list of results). Follow any appearing prompts, selecting options for EndNote, bibliographic reference manager, or RIS file.
5. This should create and download a RIS file. The file is typically found in your Downloads folder. Click once on the RIS file while EndNote is open on your computer.
6. The newly downloaded reference should import and appear in your library under a temporary folder called Imported References. This folder is located in the left navigation menu near All References. 

You can now open any of these references and edit, annotate, or organize them as needed

If you have a PDF file or folder of PDF files, you can import them into your library. When the PDF has a Digital Object Identifier, also known as a DOI, it will generate a reference and bring that PDF into your library. When it does not have a DOI (often the case with older scanned articles), it will only bring the PDF into your library.

1. Select File from the top navigation menu and then hover over Import.
2. Choose "File" if you have one PDF or "Folder" if you have a folder of multiple PDFs.
3. Click "Choose..." to locate that file or folder.
4. Ensure the Import Option is set to "PDF".
5. Click "Import".