South Tangerang, FAH Online News – As part of its efforts to strengthen information literacy among students, the Library Unit of the Faculty of Adab and Humanities (FAH) at Syarif Hidayatullah State Islamic University Jakarta organized a Reference Manager Training on Monday, June 23, 2025. The activity was divided into two sessions—10:00–12:00 WIB and 13:30–15:30 WIB—specifically targeting second-semester students of the 2024 cohort.

During the training, students were introduced to two of the most commonly used academic reference management tools: Mendeley and Zotero.

Mendeley, developed by Elsevier, is a reference management application that enables users to store, organize, and cite academic sources in one integrated platform. Its key advantage lies in its collaboration features, allowing users to create research groups, synchronize documents online, and annotate directly on PDF files. Mendeley also offers a plugin that integrates seamlessly with Microsoft Word to facilitate automated citation and bibliography formatting.

On the other hand, Zotero is an open-source reference manager developed by the Center for History and New Media at George Mason University. It is known for its clean yet powerful interface. Zotero enables users to save references from various sources directly through a browser—ranging from journal articles and books to digital documents. One of Zotero’s standout features is its ability to automatically capture metadata from web pages and online catalogs.

The first session was led by Lili Sudria Wenny, S.I.P., M.Hum., while the second session was guided by Septian Nurhakim, S.IP., a Senior Librarian at UIN Jakarta’s Main Library. Both instructors guided participants through a systematic process of using reference managers—from installation and metadata input to synchronization with Microsoft Word.

In addition, students were introduced to several academic search platforms such as JSTOR, Google Scholar, and other scholarly databases. The use of Turnitin was also promoted as a key tool for maintaining academic integrity and preventing plagiarism.

This training was mandatory and communicated through each class as part of an early-stage academic literacy development program. Students actively participated and immediately practiced the tools introduced during the sessions.

Through this initiative, FAH aims to equip its students with foundational information literacy skills—not only to support their academic journey but also to enhance the quality of the scholarly work they produce.

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