©2001 David Schultz
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Introduction
Thankfully, I am
not now writing a dissertation! But I have written
a lot in my academic career, though nothing
like I did when in graduate school. I like the
research, I like the learning that goes with
it, and I love to write. But I am not one with
a lot of patience when it comes to the details
of the craft, details of form which take away
from the content. One such nasty little detail
in academic research is citations in a paper.
Sometimes, even within one discipline, different
journals have different formats for endnotes,
footnotes, parenthetical references and so on.
On top of teaching it is hard to keep these
straight in my scatterbrained little professorial
head!
Then there is finding
reference works, books, and articles in the
first place. Run to the library, look on the
computers, which i shit-and-miss at best. If
the library has it, great. If not, a wasted
trip to the campus. Many campuses have net access
and that helps, but it only gives you availability
in most cases.
Finally, there is
my library. I have roughly well over 3000 books
in my study, mostly philosophy, but the collection
ranges from ancient history, to mathematics
and physics, and theology. I want to keep track
of them; and I want to catalog them for insurance
purposes as well (books are expensive!!). The
best way is to put them into a database. As
a Mac user I have FileMakerPro (or Excel even)
which I could use. But putting in references
for over 3000 books by hand?! I'd rather spend
time with students and other philosophers.
EndNote 4 is a program
which would have made my graduate school experiences
much better (if that is possible!). It can handle
all three of the scenarios mentioned above.
And with its Internet connectivity it is even
more powerful and useful. It can save busy teachers
time and effort that can be used for more important
things like actual research, class preparation,
and spending time with students.
In a nutshell, before
I get to details, here is what EndNote 4 can
do for you: foot- and end-note tool from within
Word, bibliography management, books database
(see below for working with FileMakerPro and
for working with EndNote and a Palm), and reference
Internet search tool — all-in-one! Moreover,
it doesn't only work with Word. Word uses the
EndNote Add-In, but you can, with a little more
effort, work with it in WordPerfect, Appleworks,
Nisus, and FileMakerPro. It can export as RTF
and HTML even.
Installation and Working
with the Word Add-In
Installation is
easy. But be careful. EndNote installs the application
itself and an "EndNote Word Add-in." The add-in
goes into the Office/Startup/Word directory.
Make sure it is in this directory. Once you
start up Word after installation you go the
"Tools" menu where you find several new commands,
such as "Go To EndNote," "Insert Citation(s),"
and "Format Bibliography."
To begin, start
EndNote and open a Library (the term for a database
of reference sources). This Library will be
the database EndNote uses to insert citations
into a paper. Then start Word and begin writing.
When you come to a citation, go to the "Tools"
menu and choose "Insert Citation(s)." But make
sure you have a particular reference source
selected, for EndNote will place the currently
selected reference source at the point in
the paper where your cursor is.
An EndNote Library File on the desktop.
Make backups -- single data files can become
corrupted easily.
EndNote puts a placeholder,
a temporary citation in your paper. It is the
author, date and reference number from the Library.
For example, it will place [Kierkegaard,
1978, #4] as a temporary citation. This
is nice in that it does not clutter your paper,
but it is limiting. Right now one cannot change
these fields, and this causes problems when
several authors with different Libraries are
collaborating on a paper. A bit more flexibility
in the placeholders would be nice.
Now, make sure you
have the proper citation style set in the EndNote
application. It comes with some 500 styles to
choose from, and you can find others at the
developer's site, and there is a lively Mailing
List on which you can ask if others have a style
you need. Also, you can create custom styles
right from within EndNote itself in its Style
Editor. APA styles, to almost any journal you
can name, and of course the Chicago 14A and
14B and Turabian Styles are included. (There
are not many styles for my area, philosophy,
but most of these journals use Chicago or Turabian
anyway.) All those nasty details I said I can't
keep straight? Well, now I don't have to —
EndNote does it for me. The Styles in EndNote
are a godsend for scholars writing to several
journals.
The Styles Manager. With over 500, and more
always available, your citations are styled
quickly and neatly.
After you have placed
all the citations in the paper, simply go to
the "Tools" menu again and select ""Format Bibliography."
Right before your very eyes you paper now has
a formatted bibliography using the default style
you have chosen. The bibliography is placed
as the last element in the paper, but you can
move it and cut-n-past it to a different location
in the paper or book if you desire. Details,
details, and little niceties -- that's what
makes a nice program. You can download hundreds
of styles here.
The Toolbar in the
EndNote application itself.
Selecting styles from the Toolbar gives you
your style favorites checked from the Styles
Manager. Styles also determine output formats.
To work with footnotes
and endnotes instead of, say, parenthetical
references within the paper, there are certain
steps you have to follow. Basically it is this
simple: Write your content, go to "Add Footnote"
under the "Insert" menu in Word, add the footnote.
Go to the footnote itself and then select the
"Insert Citation(s)" from the "Tools" menu.
Again, sit back and watch as your paper has
been formatted with the correct styles in the
footnotes themselves. And then get up and do
something fun because you just saved hours of
work!
There is another
way to set up bibliographies. You can choose
the "Scan" paper command and have EndNote, well,
scan a paper for references and create a bibliography,
with footnotes, or whatever format you use.
This is even more useful for when you have several
papers with references and citations which form
one work. You can choose the same command and
it will scan the paper, then change to "Scan
Next" which will scan the next paper. Finally,
it will place a cumulative bibliography at the
end of the last paper. Very handy for authors
writing books in separate documents containing
separate chapters.
You can search any
Library you produce. The search feature is nice
and clean, and it gives you several ways to
set up criteria. This is the Search window for
a local Library:
It uses standard Boolean operators,
you can match case, field and other parameters
as well. When you go to the "Field Menu"
("Author" in the above picture), you
a a large list of choices.
Work with AppleWorks
and Other Programs
The process for
working in other applications is bit more lengthy,
but again the time saving is worth it. Start
AppleWorks and EndNote and start writing. When
you come to a reference you switch to EndNote
and copy the reference you want to place at
the current position in the paper. Go back to
AppleWorks and paste in the reference to create
a temporary citation. You can also drag-n-drop
references too. For multiple works in one citation
just drag or copy-paste two references items.
To generate the
bibliography go back to EndNote and choose "Scan
Paper" and EndNote will scan the paper. Basically
what is going on is that EndNote is comparing
the temporary citation with the Library and
parsing the match with the styles you have selected.
You just work directly from the EndNote application
instead of the Add-in.
If you want an "Independent
Bibliography," one not associated with a paper,
say to hand out to students and colleagues,
simply open a Library, hold "Option" and drag
to an open document. EndNote does the rest,
using the Style you have selected to place a
reference in the document.
This citation insertion,
with hundreds of styles available, and bibliography
creator, alone are worth the price in terms
of time saved for busy scholars. Believe me
it works. It is not without its problems (see
below) but making small corrections is less
time consuming than doing all the footnotes
and bibliographies by hand.
Connectivity: Gathering
Reference Libraries from the Internet
Selecting your Connection Files
Without doubt one
of the "coolest" features, to speak as my students
do, is EndNote's use of the Internet to connect
you to hundreds of libraries across the world.
You can sit in the comfort of your home study
and gather every book ever on written on Kierkegaard,
have them downloaded, and new Library created
right on your desktop. EndNote 4 comes with
over 100 "connection" files for this, including
the Library of Congress, Cornell University,
MEDLINE, and many, many others. Amazingly, I
found our local university in the connection
files. So I log on from home, do my search,
the results are all neatly put into a Library
ready for use in a paper or database. The process
works well (remember though that you are working
with mostly university library servers that
can be very slow or fail to connect at times).
ISI is always updating the number of "Connection
Files" you can use. Look here
for the latest Connection Files. The manual
includes a chapter on maing your own connection
as well. [Note: Some have reported problems
with the Library Congress Connection File, but
the latest one should work.]
The Search Criteria
window when working with remote databases.
Here is how it works.
Go to "File/Connect/Library of Congress" (for
instance). A search window (above) comes up
to help you define your search by author, years,
keywords, ISBN and many other parameters. It
will also let you search "Any field." Hit "Perform
Search" and EndNote will search then show a
window saying "Search Complete," with a field
that says "Retrieve Reference 1 to 200," where
you select how many references you want to download.
The download will begin (again slow but
not 56k slow on my cable modem, but it will
take several minutes). You now have a database
of all the works in the library you connected
to. Now that you have it, you can inspect each
reference with a handy preview pane. Delete
the ones you don't want. Then, just save as
an EndNote Library and that's all there is to
it.
The results of a database
search over the 'Net.
This feature is
something I have used very often. I mentioned
I have a library in my study. I want to catalog
it in FileMaker Pro. So what do I do? I simply
connect to a Library and download references
for the books I have in my library. I then save
a Library and export as tab delimited to open
up in FileMaker Pro (which you first set up
with all the right fields, but see below). I
now have a full database of my home library.
When I get a new book I simply connect, search,
grab it, and add it to the database.
I cannot tell you
how much time this has saved me. In fact (see
below) I needed a bibliography on Kierkegaard.
I connected to a library server, searched Subject
for Kierkegaard, and got over 200 references.
It was an easy matter to export the results
as a hard copy, formatted bibliography, and,
as I will talk about in a moment, export as
html for publishing on the web.
We have noticed
that sometimes line feeds and strange little
entities are carried over into the Library created
from a retrieved database. Data files are notorious
for being dirty so this might be expected. You
can clean these up with text cleaners like TextSpresso,
but I had only minimum problems with this. But
it does become an issue when you convert your
EndNote Library into html (see below).
Again, this feature
worth the price alone, even if you never intended
to write but simply want to organize your private
library or other references for research or
personal purposes.
The "Filters" in
EndNote do allow you to get clean transfers,
up to a limit. There is a large number of them
included. And you can create your own. After
all, you are dealing with libraries from all
over the world and the data you get back is
not always consistent. Also, if you are writing
for a journal that does not require certain
elements in citations, just filter them out
(see ic below). The Filters will filter databases
and discard any unwanted information or fields,
and you can create "Filter Templates" as well.
You can download more Filters here.
HTML Export
You can look here
for an html bibliography I created from an EndNote
Llibrary. I opened a Library, chose "Export/HTML"
and EndNote created a "title.htm" file. As I said,
line feeds can be a problem and sometimes special
characters from foreign language sources fail
to translate well. It takes some cleaning up.
Moreover, the html it generates is not the best
— it is minimal though. It uses VERY simple
html with <br> tags between references.
So I imported the html EndNote produced into Dreamweaver
and added the extra code myself, and cleaned up
the spacing and some punctuation. While handy,
the html export is not as robust as it could be.
But even so, it does an adequate job and again
saves time. The lack of code in fact could be
a good thing so one can format it the way he wants.
Working with Other Programs:
FileMaker Pro and Palm Devices
All of this is very
handy. But sometimes you to do more with a Library
database. There are two issues here: (1) working
with FileMaker Pro and (2) working with EndNote
and a Palm devices. Thankfully, both are easy
to accomplish, relatively speaking.
Working with FileMaker
is easy enough if you just export the Library
in a text format, or tab-delimited and such.
Set up your FMP database first and get the right
fields in place. Export the Library and Import
the records into FMP.
But wait, there is
more. If you don't want to build a FMP database
(or lack the time), then Wooden
Brain Concepts has come to the rescue with
PocketCites 1.5. It is not the easiest way to
get things done but it helps, because it comes
with a FMP database all ready built into which
you can Import exported Libraries. It also comes
with an Export style for EndNote so that the
exported file will easily be imported into the
database.
Now for for the Palm,
there are two ways to get bibliographies into
a handheld — either by exporting an EndNote
library into a spreadsheet/database, and then
transferring it to the Palm, or making a bibliography
of references in Word or Appleworks (by the
methods described earlier in this review, see
"Independent Bibliographies"), and
then transferring this document to the Palm
in "DOC" format.
If you create your
database using FMP, then FMSync
($39) is a must have. FMSync is an application
which allows you to sync FMP databases on your
Mac to JFile databases on your Palm. It automatically
updates fields in synchs. A great program to
use with EndNote, FMP for whatever your needs
are. We will be looking at this more closely
in a later review.
Note: FileMaker has
come out with FileMaker
Mobile edition. We've had no chance to look
at this program yet but it is a third option
once you get the Libraries into FMP.
PocketCites and Palm
Back to PocketCites.
PocketCites is not just a FMP database: It is
a suite of little applications that allow you
to work with EndNote on a Palm in a pretty seamless
way. EndNote does not support Apple Events,
and this limits it. PocketCites gets around
this limitation.
As the names implies,
it is "PocketCites." The reason
is simple: It is used to set up a sync between
a Palm device and your local database of references.
It requires that you have of JFile
($24), on the Palm, and a copy of FMSync as
well. JFile is one of the best database programs
for the Palm user with a rich feature set and
ease of use. I have used it to keep a grades
database updated on my Palm. These two programs
are a must have for Palm users with FMP. Anyway
...
The idea is that with the PocketCites EndNote
style, you can simply export any or all records
you want and the rest is automatic. You can
link FM Sync to the import and export scripts
in PocketCites, so that when you HotSync not
only is the PocketCites database synchronized
record by record, but it also (can) automatically
create(s) an export file to be imported in EndNote.
So in effect you always have a current bibliography
on your PDA, and the same bibliography (in a
text file) ready to import into EndNote whenever
you need it. FM Sync is also used because it
supports pop-up fields. PocketCites sets it
up such that fields like reference type, year,
place of publication, publisher, etc, can use
predefined pop-ups, saving time.
Also, PocketCites
does a good deal of text processing that wouldn't
be possible by creating your own database. It
can truncate fields to the proper limits for
JFile, and most importantly, it replaces carriage
returns within fields so that you won't end
up with a messed up import.
An EndNote Library
in PocketCites.
PocketCites comes
with an installation AppleScript which makes
installation a breeze. Once it is set up, and
you have to follow the directions very carefully
to make sure everything is where it should be.
Read the manual carefully and follow the instructions
— it takes time but in the ed it is worth
it.
PocketCites is a
free download here.
The cost for the Mac version is $11/$22 with
a "sliding scale" for poor students
to rich (ahem...) profs. You can use it all
you want with just nags about registering, but
as always -- support shareware and pay the man:
He has worked on this program. We will have
more to say about it in a separate review.
Here is the scoop
on PocketCites:
Requirements:
- EndNote 3.0 or greater (previous
versions may also work)
- FileMaker Pro 4.0 or greater
- FM Sync for JFile (or FM Sync
for JFile Pro. Free demo version available
from FMSync.)
- Mac Palm Desktop v 2.0 or greater
- AppleScript
- Tanaka's OSAX 2.0 scripting
addition, (c) Motoyuki Tanaka (included with
PocketCites)
DocumentsToGo
However, it doesn't
stop there. While these programs are useful
and robust, there is now another solution for
Palm-EndNote users: DocumentsToGo
by DataViz.
This is one fantastic program folks. It allows
to create, edit and sync Word, Excel, AppleWorks,
the Palm doc, and generic text files. The latest
version allows you to also create new
documents right on the handheld, as well as
edit documents on the handheld. It is
a word processor and spreadsheet for the Palm
which is Mac friendly. And with DataViz's constant
upgrades and improvement (which show they listen
to customers very closely), it has a bright
future. The latest version 3.003.
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DocumentsToGo WordView
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DocumentsToGo SheetView
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How does this relate
to EndNote? It's very easy. Export your Library
as as text file, place it in the DocsToGo window
for synching, and it ends up on your handheld
with the next Sync session. Now open it in DocumentsToGo
on the handheld, add references, and sync to
the desktop. The synching back is a bit tricky,
but DocumentsToGo can help you carry those references
Libraries in your palm or pocket. We'll have
more to say about this wonderful program in
a fuller review. It doesn't do all that PocketCites
does, but it is a solution for getting endNote
bibliographies into your Palm, with as a spreadsheet
of text file.
Conclusion
I have barely scratched
the surface here. EndNote is a robust program,
and its connectivity, and the availability of
Palm solutions, makes it even more handy. Visit
the ISI page for more information. For a full
feature list see this page.
A web presentation can be viewed here.
Documentation. We
always like to mention the documentation. EndNote
comes with a printed manual. That is
good, for we like these better than PDFs or
html manuals. It is clearly written and comprehensive,
providing not just steps, lessons and tutorials,
but it also explains important concepts and
terms. With the Index it is 438 pages! Thanks
ISI.
As I said, the connectivity
is superb and fun (yes, fun!), and scholars
can find many uses for it. EndNote 4 is a great
upgrade, and a great product for busy teachers
and professors. If you are writing a dissertation
or thesis, or publish regularly in journals
and write books (all the stuff academics do
when not teaching), then this program is a must
have. If you have a library at home and want
a databse of it endnote will save a ton of time.
One thing needs
to be noted though: When you select "'Format
Bibliography" EndNote is not a speed demon by
any stretch of the imagination. This is my biggest
complaint. It takes a while in small papers
and quite a while in larger papers. Now by "a
while" and "quite a while" I do not mean hours,
but it can take several minutes. The problems
with sharing Libraries, and gaining more control
with certain fields would be helpful as well.
But considering the time saved anyway, it's
something you can put up with. I can't give
a full rating because of speed and some of these
other minor issues, but it gets 4.5 bites from
the Apple just because it has made my life so
much easier -- yummy!
Email David
Schultz
More Reviews
at Applelust.com
Helpful Links
Wooden
Brain Concepts (PocketCites, $11/$22 sliding
scale)
FMsync
(FMSync $39)
Land-J
(JFile $25)
DataViz
(DocumentsToGo. The upgrade from version 2.0
to 3.0 is $29.95 as of March. Upgrades to 3.003
are free.)
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