Literature Citation Software Goes Ballistic
A large part of graduate school is the work, research, and written documentation of one’s thesis. For the better part of the last six months, I’ve struggled not with the work or research portions, but with the written portion.
Why, you might ask? Is not the written portion simply a detailed account of what was hypothesized, performed, and accomplished?
And I’d say, “Yes, but…..”
The main problem with the written portion is the incredible number of citations that must be present throughout. In the early pages of the literature review section of my thesis document, there is nearly one citation per sentence. And really, it can’t be any less; anything that I write about must be referenced extensively from previous workers in the field.
Keeping track of these citations is enough to drive a person batty.
With a suggestion from an advisor in the department, I turned to EndNote.
Anyone who has used EndNote probably agrees upon two things. First, the program’s strength lies in its ability to format citations according to hundreds of specific journals (many of which have each their own citation format). Second, the ease and rate at which EndNote can corrupt its own library files can and probably has sent many a graduate student off the deep side.
I’ve experienced no less than three corrupted libraries since I started using EndNote about four months ago. This corruption rate is ridiculous. There’s no reason why a piece of database software (which is essentially what EndNote is) should fail so heartily. When it crashes, it doesn’t go quietly, either. It takes your entire citations library with it.
What about that library recovery feature in the menu bar? It’s never worked for me. I’m sure it’s good for something… just not this.
These frustrating experiences has wasted alot of my time and effort. That’s why I decided to find another citation database program… like this one.
Right now, I’m using a combination of Word 2008 and Papers. I wanted something that runs natively on Mac OSX, so I wouldn’t have to go into my XP partition every time I needed to work on the thesis. So far, the combination works handily. Papers certainly has its quirks (and so does Word 2008, but that’s another topic altogether), but both have gotten along reasonably well with one another so far.
This blog post does a great job of explaining how the two work together. If you’d like to use them, follow the instructions and things should go great! I used them without a hitch.
Here’s a picture of my Word 2008 + Papers goodness.
Tags: buggy, citation, EndNote, literature, Microsoft, Papers, review, science, thesis, Word 2008, XP
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