Sun, 16 Oct 1994 18:44:39 -0700 for From: lichter@nicco.sscnet.ucla.edu (Michael Lichter) Date: Sun, 16 Oct 1994 18:43:15 +0000 To: socgrad@UCSD.EDU Subject: academic data management One of my biggest problems in writing papers (besides the writing itself) is organizing all the stuff I need -- notes, references, papers and books I'm drawing on. I'm hoping that one day all the source materials I need will be on-line, but even then I'll need to keep pointers to all of them, plus the references and notes and all. One place to start is with bibliographic managers. ProCite (about $130 academic price), which is available for both Macs and PCs, has a nice interface, but it is actually better for managing bibliographies than actual citations. EndNotePlus, which is (I think) just for Macs, handles citations well (at least under Microsoft Word 5.x), but is more expensive (about $160 academic price). WordRef is a ($40) shareware package for the Mac which is less elegant than the other two, utlizes Hypercard for the bibliographic database, handles references and citations using MSWord's MailMerge facility, and does not (I think) include ASR formatting (which you can add on yourself if you know BibTeX). Mac demos of all of these are available at info-mac archive sites. There are other programs designed specifically for academic writing. I have a feeling that it is difficult to find one that really fits your writing style, but you should be able to find one that is at least helpful (note: I haven't bought any of these: no $). Below are some notes from H-MAC, the History and Macintosh list (see the end for info on subscribing). These are for Macs, but I'm sure there are similar PC programs available. Michael --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Wed, 14 Sep 1994 13:48:50 -0400 From: Chris Amirault Subject: Hypertext and Databases Mike Farmer asked about hypertext software, and Robert Perkins has asked about databases to replace filecards. There is one program that I've been using for both in my writing, and I now can't imagine writing without it. StorySpace, put out by Eastgate Systems, is a hypertext environment for the Mac (and, soon if not already, for the IBM). It allows you to create writing spaces that can include text, gfx, sounds, etc. and to build links between spaces, pieces of text, gfx, you name it. Furthermore, any space can be imbedded in any other up to some absurd depth level, and links can be made between objects at different levels. It has many powerful features that allow you to search, sort, and link spaces in ways that are difficult if not impossible with other programs I know about. While it is not built to be a "database" like FoxPro or FileMaker, for my reasearch purposes (sifting through hundreds of medical articles, taking various kinds of notes, maintaining several strands of argument at once) its flexibility makes it superior to other dedicated databases. At the same time, it does not provide fields for bibliographic information, etc., so you would need s/w for that (but, then again, neither does FileMaker). I used to do my notes in Word, then in FileMaker, and now I can't imagine not writing in StorySpace. The address for Eastgate Systems is 134 Main Street, Watertown MA 02172. The phone is 617.924.9044 or 800.562.1638. You can email Mark Bernstein, who is the chief engineer at Eastgate (and a very nice person), at eastgate@world.std.com. He'll be out of town for a week, so you may not hear from him right away. As for price, retail is $215, and it will go up to $245 in the next month or so. Academic discounts brings it to $125, which will be raised to $145 sometime soon, I'm told. October 1, Eastgate will release Storyspace for DOS. I was told that the next upgrade (StorySpace 2.0) will be a PowerPC version and won't be available for a year or so. Re: customer service, I have nothing but positive things to say about this company's support and honesty. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Wed, 14 Sep 1994 20:32:44 -0500 From: "Mark A. Gring" Subject: Re: Databases I, too, have been plauged with finding a helpful way of keeping research notes, ideas, quotes, bibliographic material, etc. for my research. I really like Pro-Cite (Mac) for my bibliographic material because it can keep track of some quotes/notes for me and is so versatile in its format output--i.e., you name the style and it can create the appropriate format. This program doesn't help me, though with topical quotes and research ideas. Thus I've purchased NoteTaker from NoteTaker Software [PO Box 10270 Truckee, CA 96162, 916/587-7450] which allows me to combine outlines and quotes/ideas in one piece of software. I haven't yet "mastered" this software but I do find that it's quite helpful in forcing me to think of research projects thematically (I study and teach Rhetoric from a Speech Communication perspective) and begin to set them up in some sort of hierarchical order. The program is versatile enough, though, to allow the user to change the outline order and "play" with the format. I suggest you get ahold of Dan Wendin about this--a nice guy. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Sun, 18 Sep 1994 20:55:13 -0500 From: David Allan Snyder From: Penny Schine Gold Subject: databases I use Academic Data Manager (ADM). It is very simple to learn and to use, and its creator (Tom Marx) is very responsive in fixing any bugs one may run into. It's also very inexpensive (about $50). You can get information from Tom at . --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu, 15 Sep 1994 09:05:44 -0500 From: das3050@tamsun.tamu.edu Subject: Academic DataManager 2.5 Review As per Sharon Michalove's suggestion, here is her review of Academic DataManager 2.5. Newer members of H-Mac have not seen this review, and it is certainly of interest to those following the current Databases thread. --Dave Review of Academic DataManager 2.5 Sharon D. Michalove Department of History University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Finding the right bibliographic/note-taking program is a very individual decision. A great deal depends on the research style of the person involved. In my case, a long dependence on note cards meant that I wanted a program that would emulate long ingrained habits but give me the advantages of a computer. While Pro-Cite and Endnote have their advocates, neither of these programs emulated my particular note-taking style. I wanted to see actual notecards on the screen and manipulate them in the same way as those sitting in file boxes from earlier research projects. Then Academic DataManager (ADM) crossed my path. When you open up the program, you see cards with places for bibliographic information and for notes as well as key words, choices of reference type, three possible bibliographic formats (MLA, APA, and Turabian), an index function, and authority lists that can be customized. Academic DataManager will turn your cards into a bibliography as a word-processing document or it can be used in creating footnotes. The cards that have been created as examples can be selected and deleted as a group so you have an empty card file to start with. To create new bibliographies, just duplicate the card file and begin again. The manual is short and easy to understand. You can create your own reference types if the possibilities available to do not match the material you are working with. The usual Mac commands are there and your work is saved automatically. Subsets of data can be made by the selected references function and you can import data to ADM and export it to other bibliographic databases and database programs. The notes field is 30,000 characters long so note-taking limitations are not a problem. Of course everything can be cut and pasted into other Macintosh programs. Searching can be done in various ways, especially using the key words. I found for my own work that designating primary and secondary sources in the key words was very useful when the time came to sort for my bibliography. How did all this work for my own project? Well, there were the pros that I mentioned but there were also a few weak points. I had been using a similar program called Refcard (Hyperglot Software) that is no longer supported by that company. Refcard allowed me to do several things that ADM does not. First, the index numbers were assigned by the user. Because my system of note taking is to have a master card for each book or article and then individual note cards for each piece of information, this system was ideal. For example, if my first book was numbered 1, then the subsequent notes would be 1.1, 1.2, 1.3 and so forth. Because this feature was not available in ADM, I used the ISBN field, which was all right as long as I didn't want to record ISBN numbers. In this regard, I would also have liked a card-copying function so that I could use my master card to create the basic new cards for my notes rather than having to copy and paste the information from each field onto my new card. I also had a problem with the selection function. I work on a Classic II computer with a small screen. The "selected" box does not appear on my screen, which is a definite disadvantae. This is a program that definitely benefits from being used on a computer with a 12" or 14" screen. That does not mean I could not use the selection function, merely that I had to resort to the pull-down menu or a dialog box every time I wanted to select or deselect a card. The final drawback for me was that text formats could not be transferred from ADM to my word-processing program. I would have liked a bibliographic format that used italics rather than underlining. After all, the only reason to use underlining is to indicate italics on a typewriter where italics are not available. With these criticisms in mind, would I still recommend ADM? Definitely. None of the problems I found were so serious as to make the program undesirable. While it is not as elegant as the now-defunct Refcard, it is an excellent choice. It is affordable, powerful, and comfortable to work with. Future versions can only improve an already excellent program. Technical support is free to registered users by e-mail, telephone, and snail mail. Academic DataManager 2.5 is available for $49.50 + $5.00 shipping from KalMarx Software, 4716 Fessenden St., NW, Washington, D.C. 20016 (e-mail: kalmarx@aol.com) but user group members can receive a back-to-school discount,through September, of $29.50 + shipping. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Wed, 14 Sep 1994 20:32:13 -0500 From: draybeck@itsmail1.hamilton.edu (Douglas Raybeck) Subject: Re: Databases Instead of utilizing database managers, I have my material (100s of pages of field notes from anthropological observations and journal entries) typed into my hard disk where I can search it with a text-search program. I use both Gopher which is simple and takes little disk space on my powerbook, and Sonar which is fast elegant and takes a lot of space. The advantage is that I can undertake complex boolean searches for narrow particulars that I may not have indexed or cross-referenced. I also find over the years that my research focus has altered and that some of the cross-referencing of my earlier notes is of little utility, while some of the connections I now wish to make are not reflected in my earlier organization. Finally, it is one hell of a lot easier than creating a database. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Wed, 21 Sep 1994 09:23:04 -0500 From: FOXS@axe.humboldt.edu Subject: Re: QUERY: Search & Retrieval I bought software called "Data Collector" from Intellimation (P.O. Box 1530, Santa Barbara, CA 93116-1530, tel. (805) 968-2291. According to the authors, "The Data Collector program ebables [one] to organize and analyze qualitative data in an easy-to-use format. Its two components, the Data Collector stack and the Notes Collector stack, may be used together or independently." I haven't used this program yet, but perhaps it's something that might interest you. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Josef Barton Subject: H-NETNEWS: Announcing H-MAC: an H-Net list for Macintosh users H-Mac, the H-Net list of the History and Macintosh Society, is now up and running. All Macintosh users in the humanities (not just historians) are welcome. To subscribe, send the following one-line email message to LISTSERV@MSU.EDU [LISTSERV@MSU on Bitnet]: SUBSCRIBE H-MAC Firstname Surname, Yourschool Example: subscribe H-Mac Ima Quadra, Cupertino U David A. Snyder, co-moderator, H-Mac das3050@tamsun.tamu.edu (Note that H-Mac uses MSU = Michigan State, unlike most H-Net lists, which use UICVM = U of Illinois-Chicago).