As my only fan has noticed, I've been quite busy for a while, working on something other than the latest grammatical adventure of Peter and Quinn, and that something was GoBiblio.com. So what is it and what does it do?

Suppose that Peter is writing an essay for English class, or a report for science class. He's required to use at least five sources to back up his statements throughout the paper. When he's done the paper, he's supposed to list his sources at the end on a separate page that will be his bibliography page, or his works cited page, or some other facsimile thereof. So how does he create such a page?

One way he could do it would be to research for hours what the proper standards are for the page and the citations. He'd have to research the proper guidelines for each citation which would differ depending upon the source type that was used (magazine, book, journal article, etc.). Not only that, he may not have access to all the information from the source that's needed to format it according to the guidelines. And what if a source has multiple authors, editors, or other contributors? And if the next paper he writes requires a different format for a different subject, he can go ahead and toss all that hard work he did looking into the proper guidelines. He'll need to do more research. But he just did a whole research paper!

There's a better way. That way is GoBiblio.com. I'm proud to announce, that with a partner, we worked hard and created a completely free, web-based solution to the problem of citing sources and creating bibliographies for research papers and the like. It's easy to use: just select the format you're working with (MLA, APA, Chicago/Turabian), the source type you're currently sourcing, enter your information in the fields provided, and click “Go!” That's it. The citation will pop out automatically and you can continue to add new sources and fully customize your bibliography. Made a mistake? Click “edit” next to the citation and change the information you've entered. Changed your mind about including a particular citation? Just delete it. And when you're ready with the entire bibliography, you can copy and paste it, print it, download it as a document, or email it to yourself. What if you want to save it to continue working on it later or to make sure that no power outages will keep you from handing in the assignment on time? Just sign up for a free account, log in, and all your work will be automatically saved. Create a new bibliography, and we'll save that one too. It's that easy and there are no limits.

Peter doesn't have to worry about how to format and create his bibliography now. He can just write his paper and remain secure in the knowledge that the bibliography part of it will be easy. We've done the hard work of studying the thousands of variations, possibilities, and pitfalls involved in citing properly according to format guidelines and then making it easy on students like Peter to use the site and take advantage of it.

And we've only just begun. We will continue to add source types and format types to make us comprehensive. We plan on implementing new features, as time goes on, to make it even easier to work on your bibliography and paper, and we will stay updated on the latest format guidelines so you don't have to.

What do I and my business partner have to gain from all of this? Firstly, the whole world gains when a difficult task is made easier. We've struggled during our studies and continue to struggle in continuing education with the madness of adhering to all the rules that make up the proper standards for bibliographies. And as lovers of language, we understand the importance of such standards when it comes to research and writing. There are other websites we've found that offer similar services, but they either cost money to use or offer sub par service. All we require to do it better than the competition is an ad-supported business model to keep us free forever, our own hard work, and the willingness of people to give us a try and to make their lives easier.

I'm proud to announce the beta launch of GoBiblio.com, and I hope you will be proud to use it. See you there!