Mendeley (Workshop)

Use Collections to organize your citations (or references).  There are many ways to organize your citations and you need to think about what works best for your research workflow and how you think about your topics.  You might consider the following:

Your organizational scheme might be based on a particular research paper or thesis

• Create a collection for the paper (name it something short and easy to remember)
• Create sub-collections based on citations you have to read, are going to use, not going to use or might use

Your collections and sub-collections could look something like this:

• Create sub-collections based on organizing based on themes or different aspects you want to cover.  

Your collections and sub-collections could look something like this:

Your organizational scheme might be based on a course and different papers or assignments or readings you have for that course.  

• Create a collection for the course (use the course name or number; names are easier to remember)
• Include sub-collections for your readings and different kinds of things you need to do for the course

Your collections and sub-collections could look something like this:

Collection and sub-collection names can be any number of letters, numbers, special characters and spaces. It's best to keep names short and easy to understand.  These are sorted alpha-numerically.  Meaning if there is a:

• number at the beginning of a collection name it will be sorted by number first. 
• letter at the beginning of a collection name it is sorted alphabetically from A-Z.
• numbers come before letters in sorting collections

Create a Collection Steps (desk top software instructions):

1. Open Mendeley.
2. Click New Collection (see left side panel).
3. Add a name for your collection.
4. Hit Enter / Return (keyboard button).

Create a Subcollection Steps (desk top software instructions):

1. Open Mendeley.
2. Right-click on the collection you wish to add a subcollection to.
3. Click New Sub-collection.
4. Add a name for your sub-collection.
5. Hit Enter / Return (keyboard button).

Add citation(s) to collection(s) or sub-collection(s)

1. Click the checkbox next to the citation you want to add.
2. Click Organize (at bottom of Mendeley window).
3. Click Add to Collection.
4. Click the checkbox next to the collection(s) and/or sub-collections you want to add the citation to.
5. Click Add (button).

Note: This does not create a duplicate item.  It just creates a link between the item and the collection or sub-collection.

Tags can be assigned to citations (or references) to make citations easier to find.  They work very similarly to social media hashtags.  If you have downloaded your citations directly from a database some of the citations might already have tags assigned to them.  

Assign a tag to a citation - Steps:

1. Click to select the citation you wish to add a tag to. This opens up the citation info panel in Mendeley
2. Scroll through the panel until you see Tags.
3. Click + (button).
4. Type in the name of the tag you wish to add. 
5. Click Enter/Return key on keyboard to save the tag.
6. Add as many tags as you feel are relevant to help you find the citation again.

View the tags for your entire library or for a specific collection.

View tags for your entire library - Steps:

1. Click All References (in the left pane of Mendeley).
2. Click Filters
3. Click the Tags (tab).

View tags for a specific collection - Steps:

1. Click the collection name (in the left pane of Mendeley).
2. Click Filters
3. Click the Tags (tab).