Aussie Cite is all Write at School!

WriteCite.com (www.writecite.com) has released an AGPS version of its very popular online citation machine. The Australian Government Publishing Service (AGPS) format for creating academic citations and bibliographies is a variant of the Harvard author date system and is used predominantly by Australian school students. Harvard AGPS style is also a recognised referencing style at Australian Universities and TAFEs.

According to WriteCite's founder, Michael Hargreaves, a significant number of Australia's leading schools are responding to the needs of their students for an 'anytime-anywhere' AGPS citation maker. "Students today research their assignments almost exclusively on the internet and look there for tools to cite their sources" Michael Hargreaves said.

"What has really garnered the attention of educators and students alike is that WriteCite previews bibliographies and in-text citations on-screen as source information is entered onto intuitively configured forms", Hargreaves added. WriteCite has been designed as a "learning by doing" referencing resource and can be customised for library websites, including Libguides and Moodle, too.

Advertisement free site customisations offer students exclusive access to features which include saving citations and citation notes (CiteNotes) to a database for later retrieval. Libraries can also have their own style guides inserted onto customised versions of WriteCite.com and communicate with their students using social media.

Through an agreement with the world's largest library database, OCLC WorldCat, WriteCite provides automatic lookup and formatting of traditional print sources. 

Requirements of the Harvard AGPS style are in some ways more complex than the very widely used APA style and the MLA style that is commonly used by school students in the United States. WriteCite has extensively coded and tested its online version against a number of University Library style guides to ensure accuracy while at the same time remaining largely intuitive and easy to use.

Ease of use by students also extends to its demonstration by Teacher Librarians. Hargreaves, who combines a prior career in IT and lecturing at a Brisbane university, understands that an easy implementation is as important as ease of use. "The key to WriteCite's adoption by education institutions around the world is that its use is easily explained by Teacher Librarians and other educators" said Michael Hargreaves.

WriteCite's Harvard AGPS online citation machine can be viewed at: http://writecite.com/students/agps/