Unlock the secrets of citations!

April 16, 2008 4:57 PM

What's all this fuss about bibliography software?

I have never used Endnote, Reworks, or any other bibliography organizing software before. However, I know it seems to be popular based on the number of questions here mentioning it and the seemingly perpetual training seminars I have seen at University libraries... but I don't see its attractiveness and I wonder if someone could explain its advantages? I don't want to be on the outs with academic technology or sound like a curmudgeon (I don't yet have a lawn for people to stay off of).

Little background: I am a history grad student and have always managed my bibliographies in a spreadsheet. When I get a new source, say a book, I just flip to the title/copyright page and write out the citation in my excel master bibliography sheet (Chicago Style). This takes about 10 seconds.

So, outside of being able to easily convert from one citation style to another, what neat things can these bibliography builders do? Or is this software just for undergrads who are confused by/or juggling different styles of citations?

Oh, and bonus points for any humanities or historian friends who can share how I can use them.

posted by boubelium to technology (15 comments total)

The greatest thing about the bib software is the ability to import sources from web journals and digitized journals. You can import all/selected sources listed in a journal article into your bib software. No typing, no transcribing errors. It's so simple and that saves loads of time.
posted by HotPatatta at 5:14 PM on April 16, 2008

We use Endnote where I work.
No me personally, I'm not a researcher.

I've noticed staff get locked in early on in their career and carry these dbs around with them.

I think the main attraction is having the software interact with their word processor.
They can enter code in their paper, which will translate to nicely formatted inline citations and long list of citation at the end of the document. All done with in the 'required' style.

I think modern citation software will download the updated databases too.

Also, there maybe some sharing of citation dbs by departments, nice for consistancy.

It's by no means foolproof, software version incompatibilites can be a headache.

Seems there would be a place for a an open standard here, and there may well be one. I've not looked into it.
posted by matholio at 5:17 PM on April 16, 2008

If you're considering giving one of the software options a go, check out this.

You should try using one for a couple of weeks. If you don't like it, go back to your archaic, oh-so-20th-century spreadsheet system.
posted by HotPatatta at 5:18 PM on April 16, 2008

Web of Science and various journal sites have buttons that automatically import the information. Also, the application Papers stores those papers with their citation information so you can easily sort and find what you want. It is way better than a big directory of poorly titled pdfs.
posted by Large Marge at 5:18 PM on April 16, 2008

Good bibliographic software allows you to:

(1) Convert between different citation styles. This might not seem like a big deal as a humanities grad student, when you only have one style to contend with. But a few years down the road, when you are revising your dissertation chapter for publication in a history journal with an unusual citation style, it can save you a lot of time.

(2) Easily cut-and-paste complete, formatted citations into email and syllabi. This is a huge bonus when sharing citations.

(3) Automatically download citations from websites. I just converted to zotero (which is free), which does this. It takes one click, which is 90% faster than your method. And it downloads abstracts and tags, too.

(4) Use complex searches and easily generate selective bibliographies. Colleague ask you for some references on consumer culture in Britain? A couple clicks and you have a perfectly formatted biblio for them.

(5) Organize multiple forms of information and media. Zotero allows you to link directly to pdfs or other files and attach notes to your citation.
posted by googly at 5:21 PM on April 16, 2008

I use Endnote, primarily because it gives me a way to keep track of everything. A spreadsheet would work just as well for that. What Endnote also does, though, is output bibliographies in (roughly) the correct format. I could do it myself, but it is just faster to use Endnote. When I am managing several different projects (from proposals to articles to chapters to various other things) Endnote makes it pretty easy to deal with them all at once.

What I do is maintain one master bibliography of everything, and then smaller sub-bibliographies for various projects. I tag each entry, and then I can easily do searches for papers on various topics.

The importing HotPatatta mentions would be great, if it worked for me. (I have Endnote 9 on OSX.5, and this feature is not working and Endnote isn't releasing any kind of patch. This seems as good a time as any to complain about Endnote: they update far too frequently with full-number versions and then charge you $100 to upgrade.) I've also noticed that, when importing references using RefWorks (which my university provides for free), the data gets completely garbled far too often for comfort.

I've never used any of the other features like "Cite While you Write." I'm in English, and it is much faster for me to just type (Author ##) than anything else. It is basically just a big database for me.

As far as this sort of software goes, if it works for you, great. If your spreadsheet works for you, that's great too. Generally, try not to change horses midstream in grad school, at least when it comes to managing a database of articles. You'll waste more time transferring things than it is worth, in my opinion. (Note that this does not stop me from trying out different methods as a means of procrastination.)
posted by synecdoche at 5:25 PM on April 16, 2008

If Excel works for you, it works for you. If you're devoting more time than you'd like to keeping your spreadsheet consistent, or tweaking entries for citations or bibliographies, then consider switching -- ideally, before you embark upon a thesis-length project. (Hooking up your primary source material to some kind of database format may be just as useful.)

The general advantage for me in learning a set of new tools -- in particular, LaTeX and BibTeX -- was that they rationalised the mechanical aspects of putting together work, and that pays off when you're working with a long, unwieldy manuscript. They also got my work into a format that was easier to control and more portable than MS Word, and spared me some of the last-minute-panic moments that inevitably come with that kind of work.
posted by holgate at 5:27 PM on April 16, 2008

outside of being able to easily convert from one citation style to another

Yeah, that's the biggest win. In my field, at least, every journal has its own fucking citation style. I don't even want to have to think about it while I'm writing. This lets me change styles in a flash.

The second biggest win is being able to import stuff from online databases. You really want to type all that stuff in again?

For storing notes, I've found all the bibliography software I've come across (EndNote, RefWorks, BibTeX) to suck.
posted by grouse at 5:32 PM on April 16, 2008

Apart from converting between bibliography styles (yes, there with you, grouse!), the main thing that Endnote does for me is removing references that I decided to cut out of my paper and adding in references for citations that I added when I was reorganizing or rewriting. I used to spend a day or so, just checking that I had all the references listed and also checking that I had none listed that I had decided to remove along the way.
Endnote also allows me to keep notes on each paper: good quotes, interesting insights, support for one argument vs. another. This repository can be searched, which makes finding the right reference for a specific perspective a great deal faster. It depends how many references you use. If you rely on the same 100-200 references for everything, you probably don't need bibliographic software. If (like me), you have over 1500 references that you call upon for different purposes, Endnote pays its way ...
posted by sgmax at 5:51 PM on April 16, 2008

So (some of these may be latex/bibtex specific, I have never used any other ref manager): (i) automatic replacement of citation and bibliography styles. (ib) some journals will take .bbl files. (ii) automatic synchronization between what you reference in the text and what appears in the bibliography. You would basically never have to directly edit the bibliography again. (iib) automatic alphabetizing, as well as automatic a,b,c type numbering for entries with the same author/year. Or automatic ordering numbered cites if that's your thing. (iii) prevention of typing errors when putting citations in the text. (iv) central repository for error correction -- if you have a typo in your central db and fix it, it will propagate on recompile to any documents that use that bibliography file. Also, makes it easy to change things that were "in press" at one point in time to years when they get published. (v) can give your references short names to save some typing. (vi) For my specific bibtex editor (BibDesk), automatic naming & management of PDF files associated with references. Also, tagging, and good search facilities.
posted by advil at 7:03 PM on April 16, 2008

The cool thing about zotero is that it doesn't just do the citations for you, you can use it as a database of the PDFs themselves. And it can screen-scrape most of the bibliography data for you and also provide a place for ad-hoc notes of various sorts. It's just a smart database, integrated with a web-browser.

Your own Excel solution is also just a database, but one that requires more manual entry. I've set up the same sort of thing in the past with Access. Those both can work. But tools like zotero streamline the process, especially now that most research is web-based.
posted by wheat at 10:08 PM on April 16, 2008

Zotero, IMHO, doesn't do my style (APA) properly though. Beware.
posted by k8t at 10:50 PM on April 16, 2008

The main advantage of citation managers is that, when writing, you can forget about formatting and concentrate on content. So you're typing away, and think, "let's put a reference to paper X at the end of this sentence" and you don't have to worry about about how it's going to look in the end:

Here is a sentence that needs a supporting citation [Smith and Jones, 1999]
Here is a sentence that needs a supporting citation (Smith and Jones 1999)
Here is a sentence that needs a supporting citation [Smith and Jones 1999]
Here is a sentence that needs a supporting citation (Smith and Jones, 1999)
Here is a sentence that needs a supporting citation [42]
Here is a sentence that needs a supporting citation (42)
Here is a sentence that needs a supporting citation [42]
Here is a sentence that needs a supporting citation (42)

etc. etc. Same for bibliographies.
posted by primer_dimer at 3:29 AM on April 17, 2008

For me, the main advantage is that I don't have to assemble a bibliography -- just about all our journals use the same format, so that's not important to me. I use LaTeX/bibTeX. All I do when I write is put in the appropriate \cite{} commands, or just enter the citation manually (Bloznik 1984) and add a \nocite{bloznik1984}.

When it's done, I LaTeX then bibTeX. bibTeX complains if I'm citing things it doesn't have, so I enter those.

At the end, I have a correct bibliography. If I cited it, it's in there. If I removed the text that cited it, it's not in there. I don't have to look through my paper and make a list of references. I don't have to know which sources I actually used.
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 5:34 AM on April 17, 2008

Thanks everyone for the answers. I think I am going to take a couple hours today and give some of these programs a test run. I think I have been replicating a lot of this functionality in Excel, as I have a number of columns to keep things like keywords, whether or not I have a digital copy, etc... We'll see how it goes and thanks everyone for taking the time to answer.
posted by boubelium at 8:11 AM on April 18, 2008