How to Cite Resources in Koha

by Margaret Hade on Oct 25, 2019

How to Cite Resources in Koha

Using Koha's Opac patrons can download lists of items to use for homework and research papers, populating bibliographic management tools like Zotero and Endnote, or just to help track their personal reading goals.

Let's start out as a patron who wants to research North American Trees. On this test site we'll search for "trees" and browse the results to find promising nonfiction titles.

Now I'll select the check boxes for the titles my patron wants to use for their research project.

With those titles selected I can add them to my Cart.

Now we'll navigate to the cart. We can see the four titles that were added to the cart. I'll select the titles and choose to download them.

After clicking Download I'm prompted to select the file type to I want to download. The options are:

• RIS (Zotero, Evernote, others) - file formats compatible with Zotero (a free and open-source reference management software) Evernote (an application software designed for note taking, organizing, task lists, and archiving) and other bibliographic management tools.
• BibTeX - a reference management software for formatting lists of references.
• ISBD - a bibliographic description standard, human-readable format, for use in a bibliography or a library catalog.
• MARC - a bibliographic description standard for machines for use in a bibliography or a library catalog.

With my file type selected I'll click the "Go" Button. This launches my download.

With the file downloaded I can open it with my bibliographic management tool, or simply read it as a text file. All of this can be done without signing into Koha. If you do sign into Koha you can create lists to accompany your research projects. These Lists can be added to throughout the project and can be download in just the same way.

Finally, there are 2 system preferences that will allow you to customize Koha's citation behavior further:

OpacExportOptions - Select export options that should be available from OPAC detail page. On the right of each Opac bib record there is a menu that allows for saving the record in various formats. The full list of options are: BIBTEX (bibtex), Dublin Core (dc), MARCXML (marcxml), MARC-8 encoded MARC (marc8), Unicode/UTF-8 encoded MARC (utf8), Unicode/UTF-8 encoded MARC without local use -9xx, x9x, xx9- fields and subfields (marcstd), MODS (mods), and RIS (ris).

RisExportAdditionalFields - Asks what fields you want to include when exporting RIS and provides you with a composition box to list them in.