One thing that we’ve stressed to our students is the need to use proper citations in their papers and projects to ensure that they are giving the originators of an idea the proper credit.  The difficulty, of course, is that each type of work requires a different format  for a Works Cited (MLA) or Reference (APA) page and many of these have changed with the recent release of updated style guides.  While I fully support teaching students how to craft these bibliographic references, as I write my own papers, I find myself constantly referring to sites like Purdue’s OWL or my newly purchased hard copy APA style guide.

David Warlick created Son of Citation Machine (SoCM) to provide students and teachers with an easy to use tool to automate the citation process a bit.  SoCM allows you to easily create citations in MLA, APA, Chicago, or Turabian formats by filling out information about a work in a simple web form.  After entering the information, SoCM provides a Works Cited or Reference entry in addition to showing the proper in-text citation format for the given work.  The end result is making a process that can be difficult and stressful essentially painless.  SoCM even allows the user to enter ISBN numbers for a work and automatically fills out most (or all) of the bibliographic information for you.

SoCM is in active development with new features and updates being added as needed.  It is free to use (unlike some other online citation services) and requires an internet connected computer with a modern web browser.  It’s also probably a good idea to verify the created bibliographic references and citations for accuracy, but any needed alterations are likely to be minor and easily dealt with during proofreading, and it’s easy to edit an entry as opposed to creating one from scratch.