Original_To:  BITNET%"notabene@taunivm"
Original_cc:  SZUCHMAN
Date:         Sun, 13 Sep 92 20:31:00 GMT
From:         "Mark D. Szuchman, History, Florida Int. Univ." <SZUCHMAN@SERVAX>
Subject:      Re:Usefulness of Ibid
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.notabene

William Turpin (and perhaps others) asks for some help and guidance from some
"enthusiastic" user of Ibid.  I count myself among these people.  Using Ibid
or Ibid+ (the differences between the two for bibliographic purposes are
inexistent) means that you enter the bibliographic item once in your life
(make backups, of course, in order to keep this commitment to "once") and make
use of it as needed and as often as necessary.  In effect, Ibid is the
electronic metaphor of the physical components that we engage in when we
browse and take works out of a library.  In other words, the library contains
all the items, we pull from its contents selected items on the basis of some
criteria (subject, author, period, etc.), BUT all the typing of bibliographic
items and all the punctation and capitalization is done by pushing
half-a-dozen keys or so.
 To William Turpin's specific question regarding subject matter and
bibliographic compilation, my strategy is always to type key terms, separated
by semi-colons, in the field labelled "Keywords for retrieval."  For the last
year, I hand out reading lists to students in my graduate seminars formatted
in the Chicago of Style "A" which are compiled and ready for printing in 3
minutes or so.  On a more informal basis, students who come to my office for
bibliographic guidance in some projects in which I have some awareness also
recieve bibliographic feedback almost instantly.
At the research end of my life, entering bibliographic items into both the
endnote and a bibliography section of a paper follows pretty much the pattern
already mentioned by Richard Betts.  Ibid is, in fact, an especially useful
departing point for research projects, or for papers on the
state-of-the-literature of a given topic.  Its seamless integration into the
document(s) one is writing is, frankly, not faily comparable to other
bibliographic programs.
Note that it is not at all necessary to install the bibliographic database
that is provided with the program.  I certainly removed it once I browsed
through it, and this is no evaluation of the bibliographic tastes of the
providers:  it just offered me little in the area of my work.
Finally, we use Ibid to manage and eventually format all the books that come
into the historical journal we edit, including the books under review.  This
means that Ibid keeps the records on the nearly 800 titles that come into the
editorial office each year.
If you have Ibid but have not installed it yet, you are losing a great deal of
flexibility and economy of retrieval and insertion.
'Nuff said.
Mark
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| Mark D. Szuchman              | Bitnet:    szuchman@servax          |
| Dept. of History              | Internet:  szuchman@servax.fiu.edu  |
| Florida International Univ.   | Phone (o):  305-348-3191            |
| Miami, FL 33199               | Phone (h):  305-382-4649            |
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