Recently I received a call by a much harassed librarian friend. Her woes the company from whom she purchased library software for automation of her library has suddenly stopped software support. And as NAAC (National Assessment and Accreditation Council) were visiting her institute in few days and her software had stopped responding due to some technical glitch and it needed re-installation. Even after much persuasion the company didn't oblige as a result she had to take the help of her IT department people. Her problem must have got solved but it made me think that a Library after spending lakhs acquires a software and every year has to undergo maintenance contract from the company but if the company closes down or stops all support what will be the future of that software. 

As the quantity of data is increasing maintaining the data in one place becomes difficult. In order to manage the data of researchers many open source software are available to have all the data in one organised place. These are referred to as online reference or citation management software. By automating the data one can gather, manage, and cite online references and these reference tools facilitates a more efficient research process. There are many reference tools available which are open source. Of which i am discussing two reference tools Zotero and Mendeley.