Managing thebibliogaphy in large documents

  • Thread starter The Rev. Ian E. Rock, M.A.
  • Start date
T

The Rev. Ian E. Rock, M.A.

I find keeping up with citation techniques in large documents (over 300
pages) to be a major challenge. Usually the first citation is full, with
subsequent citations being shorter. The problem is that if a footnote from
the same author is inserted before an existing one, it can become rather
cumbersome to find and correct. Is there any add-in for Word that will
manage this? I am told that Nota Bene has been designed with this in mind.
But there is a cost. Looking forward to your assistance on this one.
 
D

Daiya Mitchell

I hear NotaBene is quite good, but not an add-in--it would replace Word as
well as handle the biblio. However, I believe it is also quite good at
handling ancient languages, if you are doing Biblical study. If you need
Hebrew, etc, Nota Bene may be the best solution.
http://notabene.com/

Separate bibliographic programs that will do this--the big three are
EndNote, ProCite, Reference Manager--if you google for "bibliographic
management software" you may get more alternatives. I think those run about
$150-$200, and are worth it if you put the time into setup; not sure if some
less dominant programs are cheaper.
Endnote.com
Www.Procite.com
Refman.com
(all owned by same company)

All of these programs have free demo versions to try them out before you
buy.

However, what I would do, for free, would be to simply *always* use the
short secondary form of the citation, while also keeping a separate
bibliography. Then when you need to finalize, just look for the first time
each work appears in the chapter, and format that one. The Find command
will help.

(In fact, before buying EndNote, I did this:
The work was: Sturge and Harvey, Travels in Jamaica. I might put SH, TJ p.
8 in the footnotes, as I was writing. Once done writing, I would use Find &
Replace to replace SH with Sturge and Harvey, and TJ with Travels in Jamaica
formatted as italic. Then I would just format the full citation the first
time it appeared).

Depending on who you are sharing the work with, secondary citations all the
way through might be acceptable. (I am not sure whether EndNote can handle
Full First Citation in each chapter when the document has many chapters
inside the same file, come to think of it).
 
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