[Air-l] concerns about new biblio programs

[Alex Halavais]

I have been using Endnote off and on for six or seven years. It was
never that great, but bibliographic management is one of those
applications that often has lock-in, and Endnote is not an exception
here. Endnote does allow exporting and importing in a number of
formats, though (and I haven't tried this lately), it doesn't make the
process easy.

If you are going for staying power, and interoperability, it strikes
me that any system that can import and export to BibTeX should work
fine. In other words, the only systems you really have to be wary of
are those that keep your data in a proprietary format, and it strikes
me that open source products are less likely to go that route than
many proprietary systems. Like with email clients, the danger of
lock-in has more to do with how open the record system is than it does
with how open the application itself is.

- Alex


On 10/24/06, Barry Wellman <wellman at chass.utoronto.ca> wrote:
> I'm a little concerned about people getting involved in bibliographic
> programs which might not be supported in a few years, Open Source or not.
>
> Our investment in building our bibliographies tend to cumulate.
>
> That's why I stick with Endnote, despite its propietary nature.
> Even after being bought by ISI, it seems to have staying power.
> And with my 16K items in my bibliography, I'd hate to have to re-enter.
>
> Or am I missing something?
>
> Cheers, Barry Wellman
>  _____________________________________________________________________
>
>   Barry Wellman   S.D. Clark Professor of Sociology   NetLab Director
>   Centre for Urban & Community Studies          University of Toronto
>   455 Spadina Avenue    Toronto Canada M5S 2G8    fax:+1-416-978-7162
>   wellman at chass.utoronto.ca  http://www.chass.utoronto.ca/~wellman
>         for fun: http://chass.utoronto.ca/oldnew/cybertimes.php
>  _____________________________________________________________________
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> The air-l at listserv.aoir.org mailing list
> is provided by the Association of Internet Researchers http://aoir.org
> Subscribe, change options or unsubscribe at: http://listserv.aoir.org/listinfo.cgi/air-l-aoir.org
>
> Join the Association of Internet Researchers:
> http://www.aoir.org/
>


-- 


--
//
// This email is
// [X] assumed public and may be blogged / forwarded.
// [ ] assumed to be private, please ask before redistributing.
//
// Alexander C. Halavais
// Social Architect
// http://alex.halavais.net
//