What is Mendeley?
Mendeley is a free citation management system, but it also includes social networking features. It is sponsored by Elsevier, one of the largest scientific publishing companies in the world. Therefore, it's designed for researchers to discover and download journal articles and resources, organize them, read and annotate PDFs, create in-text references and bibliographies, and collaborate with other researchers. You can pay for a premium version, if you need more than 2 GB of space or need to create more than one private group with more than 3 people.
Tutorials
See http://resources.mendeley.com/ for quick start guides and videos produced by Mendeley. Highly recommended that you peruse the relevant Getting Started guide!
Tips & General Advice
Mendeley offers a desktop and web version. Create an account, download the desktop version, or the streamlined Reference Manager version for newer Mac OS, and log into the web version -- click on Library to view references. If you use both, you'll have to sync the desktop version to the web one.
Mendeley Desktop can be used with:
Mendeley Reference Manager - streamlined version of just your stored references
Adding References to Mendeley
From EBSCOhost and Other Library Databases
Use the Export function in the library database, then choose a generic format. BibTeX is a good choice. Save the .bib text file generated.
Note: Mendeley is affiliated with Scopus, so you can just choose Mendeley when exporting records from Scopus.
I have the DOI
With just the DOI, you can manually add a reference in the Desktop or Reference Manager version. (Doesn't appear to work with the web version.) Just choose Add Entry Manually and paste the DOI. For the Desktop, click the search icon after you've pasted it in the DOI field.
Using Mendeley Web Importer
Mendeley Web Importer is an extension for Chrome. (It's supposed to work with Firefox, but it isn't working at the moment. It doesn't work with Safari.) Access via the Desktop version or Reference Manager (under Tools), or go to https://www.mendeley.com/reference-management/web-importer/.
Once you have it added, you'll see the red Mendeley icon in the upper right corner. Click on the icon, log into Mendeley, and then it will try to grab any reference or PDF it detects on the web page you are on. Select the references and download the PDFs into your Mendeley account.
Using Mendeley with MIcrosoft Word
Mendeley Cite is a plug-in for MS Word 2016 or newer. Access the installation in either the Desktop version (under Tools, MS Word Plug-in), or Reference Manager (under Tools, Mendeley Cite for Microsoft Word). If you encounter a problem adding it, it's probably because the EWU SSO page is hidden -- just minimize screens until you find it. Note: It does not show up in the Microsoft Add-ins, for whatever reason.
Once you have installed the plug-in, click on References in the toolbar, and you'll see Mendeley Cite. Click on it to view your references. You can insert a reference as you type, then choose your style to create the bibliography at the end.