In addition to moving away from Word and to Mellel (which after about five days of use, I’m quite happy with, even if there is a bit of a learning curve), I’m also moving away from EndNote to Bookends. I purchased a copy of EndNote a long time ago and found it to be rather clunky and counter-intuitive. Bookends has a “Mac-Like” interface (see also Sente if you are using 10.4 or higher) and has near complete integration with Mellel (the only problem I’ve noticed so far is that Bookends doesn’t use “typographers” quotation marks and, so, they must be changed manually in Mellel). Bookends is somewhat expensive for “freeware” – about $70USD – but it is certainly more reasonable than EndNote (even for the “student” edition). Like EndNote, Bookends has a number of common citation styles included and it doesn’t look especially difficult to create new ones.
Update: Reference Miner, from the same company that makes Bookends, is also a pretty good, free product: it searches the Library of Congress, Amazon, etc. The LoC search is especially useful as it brings up the BibTex record.
And, unrelated: is anyone aware of an interview (possibly with pictures) conducted by the New York Times, published the week of January 16, 1979 with Michel Foucault?
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I have used (and taught) all of the mentioned applications. EndNote is expensive and crap. BookEnds is a good app and syncs well with Mellel, no problem there. I would like to recommend trying LaTeX with BibTeX. I did three years ago, and have not looked back. There is a learning curve, but what you get is a /very/ powerful tool that typesets absolutely brilliant looking papers.
Yeah, LaTeX was discussed in passing on my previous post. If Tim – who has a greater interest and ability in computers than I – doesn’t have the time and energy to learn it, then I most certainly don’t either.
Perhaps learning to use proper software should be included in graduate education…
I teach LaTeX to undegrads. About 1/10 actually does something with it after the tutorial, so I see what you mean. There is a LaTeX “lite” by the name of Lyx. It looks like a word procesing app but has LaTeX under the hood.
Notwithstanding LaTeX kicks total ass methinks.
Craig,
I looked in Lynch’s bibliography and didn’t turn up anything re Foucault. Lexis/Nexis lists an entry for January 14, 1979, section 7, p. 1 but it appears to be a book review and only 18 words are online:
“Prof Michel Foucault book The History of Sexuality. Vol I: An Introduction revd by Richard Poirier (L).”
PS I use Endnote because it is provided free. But I’ve never been really happy with it. Trouble is, I have a library of over 1,000 items: can Bookends import this? And what is Mellel?
Jeremy,
The question regarding the Foucault interview came up in discussion with Colin Gordon. According to Colin, Daniel Defert remembers the event vividly, but neither of us can find any reference to its publication, although Defert is certain it was published in the NYT.
BookEnds can indeed import from EndNote. I didn’t bother importing because I never got enthusiastic enough about EndNote to take the time to input a library. Mellel is a wordprocessor (note: BookEnds and Mellel are for Mac exclusively) marketed towards academics and professional researchers. Having used it for a month now, I would never considering going back to Word.
A search through Historical Newspapers shows a book review by Richard Poirier of Volume 1 of A History of Sexuality that appeared 14 Jan 79, starting on page 21 of the Book Review section and continuing on page 28. There do not appear to have been any pictures. (If you email me I’d be happy to email you a pdf of the page images.)
That appears to be the only article-length discussion of Foucault between 1 Dec 78 and 1 Mar 79. The book is mentioned a few times in listings of noteworthy books, Foucault’s name comes up in reviews of books by Chomsky and Said, and there’s a display ad for the book–but no other articles.
Yeah, that’s all we could find. It could very well be the case that either Defert was mistaken (no such interview, no such photos) or that the interview and photos never ran.
Hi,
I tried to import into bookends from EndNote, but all the PDF links are broken.
The choice of Word/Endnote vs. Mellel/Bookends looks like the choice windows vs. mac …
I go back and forth from deciding which word processor and which reference software. My history:
1. Microsoft Word all the way, then I added in EndNote 6 or something like that.
2. Then I switched to Mellel when I went to do field research and used Mellel exclusively to write my notes
3. Switched back to Word because well, I had to interface with other academicians and also with this software program called Atlas.ti that I run under emulation mode on the Intel Mac. It’s a coding software program that does NOT work with Mellel but works with .doc and .rtf and .pdf and other files. Still sticking with EndNote since that works with Word AND it also has a plethora of styles which is one of its strongest pts.
4. Now, I have access to Word 2008 and EndNote doesn’t yet work with it. Wondering if I should get Bookends so that I can work exclusively in Word 2008.
I do like Mellel a lot but because no one else I work with uses it, I am putting it aside for now (even though I upgraded to the latest version). One thing I like about Word is it does commenting and I can send files to let my advisors and friends comment. Can’t do that with Mellel, yet.
Oh…the money I’ve spent buying reference and word processor programs!
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