EndNote Lessons Learned

I have used EndNote citation software for MANY years but I am still learning :-)  A student in one of my classes had problems with EndNote writing out the names of the author within the citation.  In researching the problem - I found that if the author had published a number of resources and the author's name is entered differently in the EndNote, EndNote believes the author is different, so it attempts to help out by writing out the name.  The work around is to copy and paste the author's name into each resource so that it always appears identically.

When attempting to empty the EndNote trash - the trash would not empty.  We figured out that it was because the citations were being used in the Word document.  After deleting the errors in Word, the trash emptied because it was not in use. 

The third problem - was that the student's EndNote library got locked for some reason.  The research on correcting that problem was to restart the computer.  As challenging as issues such as the three I just discussed - it is rewarding to learn new tricks.

EndNote Citation Manager Update

EndNote citation manager has made new changes by marketing the web version as being free. I imagine that the reason is to be in competition with other free citation managers, such as Zotero, Mendeley, and others (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_reference_management_software).  The web version used to be called EndNote Web.  The new name is EndNote Basic.  The new EndNote Basic provides 2 GB of storage which is comparable to Zotero.

EndNote recently released a free app for the iPad, but the app works only for users who have the EndNote program for the Mac and Windows PC (the purchased version) account.  The most recent version of the stand alone app is X7. 

EndNote Basic provides add-on extensions for the Firefox and Chrome web browsers (probably others, too).  The add-on provides an option to save the citation to MyEndnote.com or Endnote.  When experimenting with it today, I noted that it correctly grabbed the name of the Wikipedia page comparing reference management software, but it did not find the name of the page comparing EndNote Basic with EndNote at http://endnote.com/basic.  I had avoided using the web version previously because it often crashed when I chose the option to capture to the desktop EndNote program.  It did not crash this morning.

Although I was able to capture from a couple of webpages today, it was still annoying.  I had changed the setting on the web version to indicate that the citation was for a webpage, but when I imported the citations to EndNote desktop app, the citations were imported as journal articles.

There are many tutorials for using EndNote on YouTube.  One example is the video below.

EndNote Reference Manager and Apple iWork Pages - Lessons Learned

A student in one of the classes I am teaching is using Pages on the Mac. I encourage all of the students to use a personal reference manager, such as EndNote (our university has a site license for the software).  What I learned is that EndNote has limited menu features in Pages in comparison to those available in Microsoft Word. 

• There is no clear (have not found it yet) way to refresh the citations in a Pages document when changes were made to the citation in EndNote.  
• Even if the citation output style is noted as APA 6th, EndNote names the reference page as Bibliography in bold font face. 
• You cannot use Cite While You Write from within EndNote because it works only with Microsoft Word.  When you insert a citation using the Pages Insert menu, you are able to search multiple EndNote libraries.

When I installed EndNote on my Mac, it installed correctly.  The install did not work on the student's computer.  We did a Google search and found a plug-in to enable the install.  

The bottom line is that it is possible to do Cite While You Write using EndNote and Pages, but the function is within Pages, not EndNote. There are online resources to assist with the use of the install and use of EndNote for Pages.

Windows 8 and Word Starter - First Impressions

At Georgia College the family nurse practitioner (FNP) and doctor of nursing practice (DNP) students had immersion experiences to prepare them for graduate work.  Several of the students purchased new laptops with the Windows 8 operating system (OS) for school.  My first impression with Microsoft innovations was not good.  With Windows 8 OS it felt Microsoft and Bing had hijacked the computer.  I empathized with the students as they attempted to navigate to the different applications. 

Two students purchased laptops with Microsoft Word starter.  They said that they were misled by the computer sales staff believing that Word Starter would meet all of their word processing requirements.  Word Starter is a "teaser" app.  It will allow the user to do basic word processing.  I was demonstrating the use of EndNote personal reference manager with the new graduate students.  Our university has a site license for EndNote that is subsidized with the student technology fee.  EndNote will not load into Word Starter. Both the students and I learned from the frustrating experiences with the Microsoft innovations.

EndNote for the iPad

I received an email notification that EndNote is now available for the iPad if you have EndNote X6!  The cost for the iPad app is $0.99. 

When you open the app, you are prompted to enter your EndNote Web username and password.  EndNote for the iPad has an 8 page tutorial on how to use the app.A screenshot of one of the pages is shown below.

The app has a built-in web browser to view websites while you are working with the EndNote web app.  The app includes a download function and also allow you to add files as attachments from Dropbox, the popular cloud storage solution that many of us us.   

Endnote and Word 2011 Problem/Solution

When I got the iOS upgraded to Lion a couple of weeks ago, Microsoft Office 2011 was also installed on the Mac.  I noted that the Endnote citation software was missing from Word.  I remembered that Debby had the same problem, so decided to troubleshoot the problem.  I knew that the problem was Endnote and not Word because when I selected a citation to "preview" in Endnote the style was wrong.  Although I had selected APA as the output in Word - the output in Word was also wrong.  I looked at the APA 6th template in Endnote and it was formatted correctly.  At that point, I closed the program and did some schoolwork for a few hours. 

To resolve the problem:

• The first step is to close Microsoft Word, if it is open.
• Next download the Endnote 4X update from http://www.endnote.com/support/enupdates.asp 
• At this point, you might want to close Endnote and reopen it (will explain in a moment).
• Open Endnote and select the output style (I use APA 6th edition)

The next step is to select the citation style in Word.  The Endnote menu is available from the Tools menu.

I  believe that Endnote may have gotten confused when I did not close it after the update.  Anyway, I am very happy to report that the problem is resolved.   More and more of our nursing students use a Mac.  Since I require the students to use a citation manager and our university has a site license for Endnote - I needed to figure out a solution.

Personal Bibliographic Manager Software: Endnote? Zotero? or Both?

I was reading an article this morning that provided an analogy that the use of technology is like learning to ride a bicycle with no training wheels.  How true, especially for those who are uncomfortable using technology.  Switching from using hand-written notecards to store reference information to a software solution can be an adjustment.  I have been teaching students how to use EndNote (http://www.endnote.com/) for several years now.  I began teaching undergraduate students to use Zotero (http://www.zotero.org/)just a couple of years ago.  My colleague, Karen, said that she attempted to use Zotero with graduate students and had all sorts of problems.  She has decided to switch back to requiring EndNote, but accept Zotero for students who cannot affort to purchase EndNote.

One of my students is writing a paper about the use of Zotero and inadvertently nudged me to learn something new :)!  She had downloaded the beta version of Zotero that allows for sharing of references and synching the reference library with the Zotero server.  Wow, did that get my attention!!  Why?   I now will begin to use the sharing aspect of the references with students in courses that I teach.  I really like the way that I can grab info from web sites in Zotero and attach any associated PDF file with a click of the mouse.  I  also like the way that I can use EndNote to search for articles in PubMed and also search for PDF copies of the references.  Because the two software packages have different strengths, I have decided to use a combination of the two.  I can export references from EndNote into Zotero so that the file can be synched and shared.  To learn more about the beta version of Zotero, go to http://www.zotero.org/support/2.0_beta

Personal Reference Manager - Exporting Citations from EndNote to Zotero

Two new members of our Web 2.0/Health 2.0 research team will be using Zotero to manage citations.  I needed to share the citations information that our GCSU team members had already collected.  The solution was not obvious at first because the export functions in Zotero differ from Endnote.

I knew that Endnote could import files from Zotero if I had exported them as a RIS file. The screenshot on the left shows the export file formats that are available in Zotero.

The problem  was the export features in Endnote were different (See screenshot above).  RIS was not listed as a file type.   

The solution?  I had to select RefMan (RIS) Export as the Output Style using the drop-down menu by output style first (See screenshot below) and then export the file as a text file(.txt)!  I found the solution counter-intuitive, but it worked! 

This information supplements Chapter 12 (Thede & Sewell) on Digital Libraries and Personal Reference Managers.