These tools help organize and retrieve citations for books, articles, and Web sites. They then work with word-processing software to create properly formatted footnotes, citations, and bibliographies.
In Ebsco databases, just use the "Cite" tool at the right of any article's detailed description to see the correct citation formatting for many styles (APA, MLA, etc.).
This video shows how to create an alert in any Ebsco databases (look for the 
symbol). There are also print guides to creating Ebsco Alerts (either Search Alerts or Journal Alerts).
This video shows how to create email alerts in Google Scholar. Be sure to set your "library links" settings to search John Carroll University and/or OhioLINK. Google also provides a detailed print guide.