[Air-l] EndNote

[elw at stderr.org]

> ps - if anyone has found a good solution for sharing a single EndNote 
> file (so that multiple people on a research team can update a single 
> database over a network), can you please let me know how you do it?

I've observed that this (serious collaboration among numerous people) is 
generally the point at which it begins to make sense to switch from 
endnote to bibtex for reference storage.

Several of the lab groups I've interacted with use BibTeX as the central 
point of storage for bibliographies, with updates managed via either CVS 
or SVN checkins. This seems to work well; individual users can still 
import the revised version of the bib into endnote for their desktop use 
if they like.

Part of the reason for this is that .enl files are binary, and that 
version control of binary files doesn't often make much sense.  (And when 
it does, people call it "asset management" instead... :) )

<tangent>

People seem to find that good version control of their documents is a 
miracle, of sorts -- once you've experienced it, generally when it saves 
you from a disaster of some kind, you never want to give it up.  Ever :-)

Version control, from a sociotechnical perspective, is a *very* 
interesting set of moves.

</tangent>


--elijah