Citation-Management Software helps ease a tortuous task

Tedious at best, tortuous might be a better word for describing what it's like for people preparing bibliographies without citation-management software. Keeping track of readings and then typing the list of references with proper punctuation and consistent formatting can be very exasperating. Software tools such as EndNote and ProCite can help by enabling you to create and maintain your own database of journal articles, books, book chapters, dissertations and other types of materials. Once a reference has been added by typing or downloading, you can search, sort, retrieve and edit records that can be formatted easily in a large variety of styles (e.g. APA, MLA, Chicago) and copied into virtually any word-processed document.

Importing records isn't possible from all BISON databases, but EndNote and ProCite are compatible with many of the most important ones. The UB Libraries Catalog, for example, won't work with either program, but ISI's citation databases work fine with both packages (not surprisingly since ISI now owns both EndNote and ProCite), and, with a bit of tweaking, you can import records from many of the Ovid, FirstSearch and SilverPlatter files. Introductory information and instructions for using both programs with BISON as effectively as possible are available at http://ublib.buffalo.edu/libraries/help/citesoftware/index.html or you can connect directly to the EndNote guide at http://ublib.buffalo.edu/libraries/help/citesoftware/endnote.html and the ProCite guide at http://ublib.buffalo.edu/libraries/help/citesoftware/procite.html.

Neither ProCite nor EndNote is available on public workstations at UB, but faculty, staff and students may purchase them for the educational discount price at UBMicro. You also can download fully functional demo versions of both databases from ISI's Web site at http://www.isiresearchsoft.com.

There are other citation-management products on the market as well, and you can find comparative reviews at Electronic Research@Chorus http://www-writing.berkeley.edu/chorus/eresearch/and in Nature's online software review of "Reference Managers" http://nature2-uu.edoc.com/software/refman/intro.html.

For help with using ProCite with BISON databases, contact Don Hartman at unldon@acsu.buffalo.edu or David Bertuca at dbertuca@acsu.buffalo.edu; questions about using EndNote with BISON databases should be directed to Sharon Murphy at hslscm@acsu.buffalo.edu.

-Will Hepfer and Nancy Schiller, University Libraries