Re: Group power (Jont Allen )

Subject: Re: Group power
From:    Jont Allen  <jba(at)RESEARCH.ATT.COM>
Date:    Tue, 25 Nov 1997 17:40:16 -0500

Paul von Hippel wrote:
>
> The wished-for bibliographic resources are, to a large degree, already
> available.
>
> As you know, there are large on-line research databases (INSPEC,
> PSYCHINFO) that are indexed by keyword, among other things.
>
> To sort and format information from these databases, many of you probably
> use the programs EndLink and EndNote, available commercially from Niles
> Associates (www.niles.com).
>
> EndLink can download selected on-line references and convert them to a
> canonical format, stored in a file on your personal or network computer.
> EndNote can convert references from this file to textual citations and
> references. The citations and references can be automatically formatted to
> conform to APA style, Author-Date style, the Chicago Manual of Style, or
> other standards.
>
> EndNote is compatible with Framemaker and Microsoft Word, among other
> programs. From experience, I can say that its integration with
> Microsoft Word is almost seamless.

First: I'll bet that the quality of the database isn't too high. By this
I mean that the references are almost random, with lots of typos and errors.
This is because the process was done by people who don't know anything about
the topic, and don't care if the process is error ridden.

Second: how are the databases organized? The way you would want, by topic?

Third: if you find an error, can you fix it? If you have your own
database, you can fix problems. (This is exactly why we have Linux, even
though that wonderful MS Win95 system is around. Same problem =;>).

Last: what does it cost, and how convent is it to use?

Jont

--
Jont B. Allen, Room B009; AT&T Labs-Research 180 Park AV; Florham Park NJ 07932
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