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I've been using EndNote for a couple of years now to organize my research. Although it's billed as a bibliographical software (and does indeed fulfill that function exceptionally well, with great flexibility for automatically formatting both citations of all kinds, and bibliographies) it also functions very well as a knowledge management software, withe extensive spaces for notes, links which remain live through the life of the library. I love the flexibility of cite while you write function, which inserts correctly formatted footnotes, endnotes etc. and also adds each source to an alphetabized bibliography as I write. And its possible to search any EndNote library via many routes - author, subject, keywords defined by each EndNote user, etc. I first used it, after years of prodding from a colleague, when he showed me that I could actually write in each entry where I had filed the source - either via a relative link on my personal computers, or a URL, or a text tag, like "orange folder, bottom shelf, bookshelf by door of study" which, for an eclectic, passionate but basically disorganized researcher such as myself, was a huge gift. Oh, and it's also possible to download references directly from major libraries' online catalogues and commercial research databases. Now I keep one big library, into which I enter all the books and articles I read, whatever the subject, leisure, pleasure, creative or professional, movies, music, web sites, softwares, etc. etc. I'm often surprised by the connections I uncover between quite distinct areas of my creative and professional lives via EndNote, and I'm now involved in a project to teach the software to first-year university students, as a tool of integration which they can use throughout their academic careers. Wow - I didn't realize I was quite so enthusiastic until I wrote all that down. Hope this helps, Lesley Smith PS EndNote arrive with a huge manual, but it's possible to work out the basics to being building a library and using Cite While You Write very quickly On Sun, 11 Sep 2005, Sue Thomas wrote: > I'm posting this query to the list and also to Tipmonkies > http://www.tipmonkies.com/ > > I'm just starting a big book project which is going to take me five years > and will involve an extensive bibliography and an awful lot of footnotes. > Worse, it will be a multimedia bibliography which so far is spreading across > bloglines, furl, and del.icio.us as well as all kinds of other websites and > print media. > > What I would like is some kind of template - online or offline - where I can > collect my growing multimedia bibliography in an orderly fashion, and in > established format, MLA or whatever. > > An important function I'd like is one with fields which retain the correct > formatting for each entry, i.e. Automatically generating apostrophes around > certain kinds of titles, or making them italic or underlined, etc. Doing > that kind of formatting is the most tedious part of the job, so a record > which only exports as plain text, for example, wouldn't be much help because > I want to be able to then paste references into footnotes and also generate > or paste the whole list into a Word doc when I need to - and keep the > formatting at the same time. A tall order! But I always end up with > references all over the place and this time I want to start off on the right > foot. > > I started creating this in Excel but realised it would be sensible to find > out whether someone has already done it first - does anyone have any ideas? > > oh, and I am Mac-based :) > > Thanks > Sue > > ********** > > * Visit the Writing and the Digital Life blog http://writing.typepad.com > * To alter your subscription settings on this list, log on to Subscriber's Corner at http://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/lists/writing-and-the-digital-life.html > * To unsubscribe from the list, email [log in to unmask] with a blank subject line and the following text in the body of the message: SIGNOFF WRITING-AND-THE-DIGITAL-LIFE > ********** * Visit the Writing and the Digital Life blog http://writing.typepad.com * To alter your subscription settings on this list, log on to Subscriber's Corner at http://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/lists/writing-and-the-digital-life.html * To unsubscribe from the list, email [log in to unmask] with a blank subject line and the following text in the body of the message: SIGNOFF WRITING-AND-THE-DIGITAL-LIFE