Subscribing to RSS feeds allows you to keep up with recent posts on blogs and content updates on news sites and online journals without having to visit them each time you’re looking for what’s new. Try Google Reader or feedly.com for aggregation solutions.

Reference management software is incredibly useful for academic work. It is commonly able to import references from across a wide variety of platforms into a personalized, indexable reference library, and to generate and export bibliographies in a wide variety of formats and styles (AP, APA, Chicago, MLA, etc.).

RefWorks and Zotero are two of the most common and user-friendly reference management software platforms. You can sign up for an individual RefWorks account via the Graduate School of Journalism here. Zotero is available as a free plugin for Firefox, Microsoft Word, and OpenOffice. A beta version (3.0) offers plugins for Google Chrome and Safari, as well as a Firefox-compatible standalone application that allows reference management from your desktop when you’re offline.

Usage guides for RefWorks can be found here (video tutorials) and here (Quick Start Guide); video tutorials for Zotero, here.