Bibliographic Management Software

No, actually, asking everyone on this board is my first step. Have you used it? What do you think?

 

Hi,

You should also give Mendeley a try (www.mendeley.com)

It's free, available on Windows, Mac and Linux, and is desktop software that is not dependent on any particular browser.

You simply drag and drop your PDF files into the desktop interface, and it extracts the metadata from the articles. You can also use the web importer to import articles and citations while you are browsing the net. You can sync your library of articles, which means that you can access them on your Mendeley web account from any computer with an internet connection.

There's a PDF viewer in the software, and you can highlight and add sticky notes to the PDFs in your library. You can do full-text searching across all the PDFs and also tag them to make organisation easier.

Finally, there are plugins for MS Word and OpenOffice so that adding references to a Word/OpenOffice document and creating bibliographies is quick and easy.

I'm one of the team behind Mendeley, so if you have any queries, please don't hesitate to ask.

Thanks
Andrew

 

A friend of mine told me about Endnote when I started my PhD program, and the UF library has classes on how to use it, so I've been using that for a while. I'm not particularly thrilled with it, but I know how it works, and it does the job.

I believe they offer a free trial from their website. It is kinda pricey though. I think I would recommend something freeware and see if that works for you first.

 

Interesting. Thank you for the info. I may give it a try.

 

Thanks, Andrew. Does it work only with PDF files? How well would it work if I were reading a conventional text book? Could I download the references from a library site and then add notes as I read a physical text? Would it interface with any eBooks?

 

EndNote

Yes, I started using the ProCite product back in undergrad, and eventually switched to EndNote. EndNote is an excellent tool for note taking and databasing articles. You can summarize each article in your own words for later use; use EndNote to categorize your articles. The last two versions have included EndNote Web accounts, which can be useful. When citations are "exported" from the various databases NOTES is reserved, so enter your notes on theory, research model, methodology etc. in the "research notes" section. You may want to consider "Citation" as an alternative software package.

The cost? With a student discount I haven't paid more than $60.00 for an upgrade since I started using the product. Student and academic versions are listed on various vendor sites as between $115-$225. Hope this helps.

Karl

 

If what you want is to format a research paper or a dissertation, I did my whole masters and Ph.D. using Reference Point's APA software which costs less than 30 dollars and you can download it on the spot. It is for Windows only, I believe. This software saved me tons of headaches and lots of time. Another great one is Style Ease software. If you are a professor you can get a full blown copy for evaluation totally free. That one is also about the same price.

 

So, would the Reference Point APA software only be able to format citations in APA style?