To the Editor:
While plagiarism is a serious offense, most instances are not intentional. Envision this: it's 2:00 a.m. the night before a paper is due, and you've just put the finishing touches on your work. Then you get started on your bibliography and your footnotes. You realize you can't find the page numbers of a couple quotes from a certain book that you've already returned to the library. You have all the other publication information for that book, and it's too late to go back to the library to pick out that quote ... so you are tempted to make up those page numbers.
Something as small as entering a page number incorrectly still counts as dishonesty. As the article "Careless citation could lead to serious consequences" pointed out, students can be penalized for improper citations. That's why Tisch Library has a subscription to RefWorks, a citation manager that organizes your citations and formats your footnotes or in-text citations while you write your paper. RefWorks can help you avoid accidental plagiarism, and it can save you loads of time. (A paper you think is "done" at 2:00 a.m. may take the rest of the night to finish your Works Cited ... Take it from someone who has been there.) You have a free account to RefWorks through Tufts. For more information, go to http://www.library.tufts.edu/tisch/ra/aboutRefWorks.htm. You can also contact me or any reference librarian at Tisch.
Abigail CrossAffiliate LibrarianTisch Reference
