You should try to import references from existing sources if possible. However, There are times when you can't find the metadata of a reference, for example, a website, or an unpublished report. In this case, you will have to index the reference by yourself. EndNote allows you to create a bibliographic record for a reference whose metadata is not readily available with many different reference types. Most of the time, users find it necessary to manually create a bibliographic record for a website or a webpage. The steps below will help you create such a record in EndNote:
- Open your EndNote library in which the new record is to be placed.
- Click the Reference menu on the top.
- Choose New Reference. A pulldown menu will be displayed with many different types of references for you to choose from. Here we use a website as an example.
- Scroll down to the bottom in the popup window to choose Website.
- The record form is now ready for you to enter the metadata.
- Have the affected website open and copy the author name (if available) and paste it in the Author field of the form. If it is a personal name enter Last name, First name. If it is a group author, then make sure to add a comma ',' at the end of the group name, e.g. Center for Disease Control and Prevention,. If the comma is not added, the last word of the group author will be treated as the last name.
- If there are multiple authors, enter one author in one line. Do not enter all the authors in one line. They would be considered one author.
- Copy the title of the reference and paste it in the Title field.
- Enter any relevant keywords for easy retrieval in the future. If there are multiple keywords, make sure to enter one keyword or one phrase on one line. Putting them on one line will make them appear as one keyword or one phrase.
- Since it is a website, it must have a URL. Make sure you copy the URL from the website and paste it. Try not to type it as you can easily make mistakes and have typos.
- Continue with the other fields wherever information is available. Even though you only need a few major fields to make a formatted reference, the more information is captured, the better. It will make it easier for you to locate the reference when you need it and review the references.
Should you have any question on manually adding references, please feel free to contact your librarians for help.