"bibliographies made easy"

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Still remember the horrors of typing the details of each reference in the Literature Cited section of your thesis manuscript? As if writing the text from the Introduction to the Conclusion sections and formatting tables and charts weren't bad enough, we also had to contend with our school's citation style! 

Thomson Reuters, along with other software developers, recognised this scholarly problem and developed EndNote, a citation management software. Think of it this way: it is a type of software that help writers organise their references into a bibliography database; it's just like a library's card catalogue, only without the bulk, the musty smell, and the Library of Congress codes. 

I've been using EndNote 9 for seven years now and it really lives up to its slogan, "Bibliographies made easy". It's makes my life easier because I don't have to spend so much time focusing on the Literature Cited section anymore. I actually spend more time reading the references that I cite! 

How did EndNote help make my bibliographies easy?
  • I import article metadata (authors, year of publication, title, journal, volume, page, etc) from the Web into my computer's EndNote database rather than type the information manually.
  • There's the Link to PDF/URL feature that allows me to easily retrieve journal articles stored in the computer or available in the Web.
  • Citing references while writing the manuscript is as easy as copying from the EndNote library to the word processor (MS Word, OpenOffice Writer). I'm just not sure though if this works with Google Docs.
  • To format the Literature Cited section, just choose the Output Style and then click the Format button... the output style takes care of how the citations will look like.
  • All I have to make sure of just before submission is that the spellings are correct, the publication dates are correct, and the margins and spacings in this section are according to the requirements of the school (or the journal where the manuscript is being submitted).

The other cool thing is that you don't have to muddle through learning about how to use the software on your own. There are quite a few user's guides of EndNote 9 out there in the Web. Plus, EndNote can easily be contacted via its Twitter account (@EndNoteNews) as well. 

Here's a link to the User's Guide from Columbia University:

Here's a link to the introductory tutorial from the University of Queensland:

Even after seven years, I'm still learning new things about EndNote 9. These reference materials are still good reads.

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