Citation is Critical Tool for Writing Dissertation

By Michael Dziubinski - International Studies Dept, Old Dominion University

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This story is about bad news and good news. Not to keep you in suspense, the good news has outweighed the bad, but more about that later. After retiring from a military career of more than 20 years, I took a job with a federally funded research and development corporation. This particular organization is full of highly qualified, highly motivated, and highly educated people that work in the public interest.

After I spent a year in this organization, my supervisor suggested that I pursue an advanced degree. The organization would pay for the schooling, and a nearby college had a good program, but they both required full-time attendance as a condition. As I completed my Masters degree in 1983, it was somewhat of a challenge to work a full-time job (much more than 40 hours a week) and start attending school full-time in August 2000.

After the first few short papers, spending more time formatting source material than writing the paper, I recalled that there was some software to assist me with this task. Conducting an Internet search I discovered and researched three or four different solutions. I actually bought both Citation and a competing software package, and through side-by-side usage determined Citation was the superior performer. Although other software packages had better looking user interfaces, none could match the footnote, endnote, reference, bibliography formatting flexibility and capability inherent in Citation.

As mentioned above, for me, time is always at a premium. Citation has saved me countless hours of tedious formatting and recently enabled me to effectively prepare for my Ph.D. written comprehensive exams. Since I had captured the bibliographic data about the references throughout my academic work, and in some cases stored research notes, I was able to generate a complete list of references and notes in Word 2002.

Here comes the bad news. Shortly after that, my computer's hard drive that has my programs (not my data) went into terminal arrest. On power up, all I got was a vigorous clicking sound.  I have since replaced the hard drive, and reloaded most of my software.  It took only one e-mail to Citation, and less than 24 hours, for them to check their records and send me a new download location and password. Citation is back up, it will be a critical tool as I write my dissertation.

By Michael Dziubinski

International Studies Dept, Old Dominion University