Questions about EndNote

[Peter Frank]

Hi,

I am using EndNote 7 together with Word on a Mac. I know this is not an
EndNote newsgroup but I just couldn't find any NG or forum on the Web
for EndNote. Or can you point me to one? The EndNote support couldn't
help me either. Since several questions about EndNote have already been
posted in this newsgroup, I thought I ask here.

I have created many EndNote libraries. I wouldn't want to put all
references into one library because dividing them up by subject makes
it easier to just browse references that I am interested for the
moment. However, I also need to be able to search for references in all
libraries - and that seems a bit like a problem in EndNote. Opening all
libraries and searching them individually is far too laborious.
Unfortunately, there is no option for selecting and searching several
libraries at once in EndNote. So, the only remaining option is to
additionally create one big library with all references. Doing that
manually is rather tedious too, so I am wondering whether there is
method to merge them all together with some software tool. As far as I
can see, EndNote libraries are not just plain text files, so a tool
that could merge plain text files would not do.
Any ideas how to handle this? Do you work with one big EndNote library
only?

Best regards,
Peter

 

[Daiya Mitchell]

EndNote uses a mailing list for peer support, and toward the bottom of this
page, you will see a link to join and a link for the archives:
http://endnote.com/support/ensupport.asp

Though I'm totally offtopic, since this group generally concentrates on
EndNote and Word interaction when EndNote comes up, I will respond since I
need prompting to think about EndNote, which I fail to make best use of and
am not very expert in. But there aren't actually that many EndNote users
here, while the mailing list reaches quite a large number, and I think I
remember previous discussions on it about how people use EndNote.

I thought EndNote recommended you keep only one library because it will only
use one library to format a document at a time? (Maybe if you use Instant
Formatting which I am leery of this is not the case--or no, maybe you just
have to make sure all libraries are open when formatting--I know when I
first started with EndNote 3 it was strongly advised).

From EndNote 8 Help (I skipped EndNote 6 and 7)
" You can cite references from multiple libraries. Simply open the selected
libraries before you begin inserting citations.

If possible, though, we recommend that you use a single library when writing
a paper. Keeping all of your references in one library simplifies the
writing process because you know exactly where to find each reference, there
is little likelihood of duplicate references, and you only need to have one
library open when inserting citations."

My suggestion would be to keep all sources in the same library but use
keywords to browse by subject, or set up a custom field for subject. EndNote
8 Help says you can save a search, don't know if that's new. Can't see any
way to search multiple libraries in EndNote 8...

I do keep all my references in the same library, except for my index of
archival documents which I would never use EndNote to cite anyhow, and
simply used EndNote to catalog. Keywords let me browse my main library by
say, all synthesis-textbook-type works, or all primary sources.

I think you should be able to merge the libraries by say, creating a new
library and dragging all the items from one library window into the new
library window, though I've not tried it.

EndNote 8 Help says you can use drag and drop, or Copy and Paste or the File
| Import function.

However, a caveat:
"Any time you add references to a library, the newly added references are
assigned new record numbers in the order that they are added to the library.
This means that a reference that was #23 in a smaller library, could become
#600 in a larger library. As a result, you cannot use the larger, merged
library to format papers that have citations with the older record numbers."

You can work around that by marking the papers "use old library" and keeping
your old libraries in case you ever need to reformat those papers, I assume.
Copying and pasting from an old paper into a new paper could generate some
difficulties, I suspect.

If you are looking at reconfiguring EndNote and the way you manage your
bibliographies anyhow, you might as well consider testing the Mac-only
alternatives, assuming you don't need to share EndNote libraries.
http://www.sonnysoftware.com/
http://www.thirdstreetsoftware.com/index.cgi?page=sente

Hope that helps,

 

[Peter Frank]

EndNote uses a mailing list for peer support, and toward the bottom of this
page, you will see a link to join and a link for the archives:
http://endnote.com/support/ensupport.asp

Thank you for pointing me to this one (and the other tips you gave me)!
The question has been asked there several times before and though there
is no real solution people have devised different workarounds for this.

Regards,
Peter