Overview: Smart Import is a feature that helps students quickly identify and enter the citation elements for certain web sources. The NoodleTools team identifies websites that provide an API or that have embedded bibliographic metadata (this is not a generic "web scraping" auto-citation service). Prioritizing domains most commonly cited by NoodleTools users, Smart Import is available only for websites when we're sure quality citations can be produced consistently.


Note: This feature is currently in beta. During this phase, the Smart Import button will appear for a relatively small number of websites (increasing noticeably over the next year).


This article applies to: 

✔︎ NoodleTools School Subscription

✔︎ NoodleTools Individual License

✔︎ NoodleTools MLA Lite

✗ NoodleTools Express

Instructions


To understand how Smart Import works, A&E's History website is used here as an example. 


Step 1:

Open the NoodleTools project you are working on and navigate to the Sources screen. Click the New Source button and choose the appropriate form for your source (i.e. Web Page, Video Clip, Journal, etc.).


Step 2:

In a second browser tab, navigate to the article you wish to cite.



Step 3:

Copy the article's URL from the browser's address bar to your clipboard.



Step 4:

Back on the NoodleTools tab, locate the URL field on your citation form. When you paste the URL that you copied there, a Smart Import button will appear if we currently support Smart Import for that particular domain. 


Note: There may be other instances when Smart Import is not available. For example, we may have exceeded the site's API call rate if many students are citing one website at the same time. Or we may temporarily disable Smart Import for a website if our automated quality monitoring yields unexpected results.



Step 5:

Click the Smart Import button. The appropriate fields on the citation form will be filled. Be sure to review the imported data for accuracy, then click Save when you are satisfied.


Your citation is complete!



Want to see the feature in action? Here's a short video demonstration: