Bibliographic Database Question

[bratty_jedi]

My school has RefWorks so I've long used that to organize my dissertation and teaching sources (separate accounts). I have a couple of problems with the program, however, and am interested in either having someone better at using RefWorks than I am tell me how to make it work for me, or in getting suggestions on specific programs that might work

Comments

[chasbrown]

Zotero or Mendeley will probably do what you need.

[wagrobanite]

Zotero rocks

[bratty_jedi]

I've tried playing around with Zotero this afternoon. A lot of the features I need or think I want appear to be available in the absolutely least intuitive ways possible. This thing does a lot, but the learning curve has been steep for me thus far, which is not something I'm used to. Since you sound like you have experience with it, I hope you won't mind a question.

What is the easiest way to go about doing complicated Boolean searches? As far as I can tell, Advance Search only allows for either ALL terms or ANY terms but not a mixture of both. So I might want to construct a search based on the following subcollections: "slavery AND (1700s OR 1750s OR 1760s OR 1770s)" but I can't do that because it is impossible to combine AND and OR in one search. The only solution I've found is to do an any search that would translate to "1700s OR 1750s OR 1760s OR 1770s," save that search, then do an all search for slavery AND the results of the previous search. Is there an easier way to do this kind of thing that I'm just missing?

[wagrobanite]

o.0 I have no idea. I've never played around with that function... I've only honestly only used it to keep track of my research articles and which ones I've read and taken notes on. Sorry!

[tisiphone]

With EndNote you can also define your own citation styles (in addition to the couple hundred that come by default), so if you are working with something really strange you can deal with it easily.

[bratty_jedi]

Thanks for the suggestion. I've never tried EndNote and wouldn't mind giving it a shot, but with my university not providing it, I think I'm going to try some of the free options first. If they don't work, I'll definitely give it a go.

[tisiphone]

EndNote has a 30-day free trial if you want to play around with it before deciding to buy.

[brittdreams]

Zotero or Mendeley. And use tags in addition to folders.

[bratty_jedi]

Thanks. I'm giving zotero a shot. Here's hoping.

[wagrobanite]

cause LJ is retarded
replace xx with tt:

Here are some other suggestions that were suggested to me and/or this community which I found here: hxxp://gradstudents.livejournal.com/358813.html?view=10908061#t10908061

hxxp://chnm.gmu.edu/tools/scribe/
hxxp://www.citeulike.org
hxxp://jabref.sourceforge.net/
hxxp://www.bibtex.org/Links/