From: 2034bang@ucsbuxa.ucsb.edu (Steve Bang)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.apps
Subject: Re: Pro-Cite info?
Date: 9 Sep 92 04:49:29 GMT

In article <1992Sep4.153251.25010@ucsu.Colorado.EDU> brandy@tramp.Colorado.EDU (BRANDAUER CARL M) writes:

>I have been using ProCite for just a month or so and think that it is quite
>powerful and fast.  However, like all powerful tools, it takes some time to
>learn, something not helped by some strange organization of the screen
>menus and by incomplete information in the otherwise excellent manual.

>The organization of the screen menus strikes me a strange because the
>numerous option screens are accessed from different menus.  Thus, fonts,
>point sizes and the like are changed in a 'Configuration' screen accessed
>from the 'File' menu, what parts of a bibliographic entry are printed,
>other stylistic options from various screens gotten at through the
>'Bibliopgraphy' menu.  An approach such as the multiple choice screen used
>in Word 5 would be very nice.

>Be aware that your friendly school computer school may not have the best
>price for ProCite.  After paying $300+ here I found that one of the big
>mail order places (Mac Zone??) was asking $198.

Carl is correct in his comments--Pro-Cite is powerful and fast (and
expensive at most sites).  But after having used Pro-Cite for the Mac
for over two years and having thousands of hours experience working on
a library reference/information desk, I've learned that no matter how
powerful a computer tool is the factor that matters the most is ease
of use.  In this area (and overall cost), Personal Bibliographic 
Software has a lot to learn.  Pro-Cite is a great bibliographic program 
for high-end users, bibliographers and librarians, that will use it daily
in the construction of large bibliographies.  Although it offers more
powerful search capabilities and other advanced features, the overwhelming
majority of bibliographic database users are researchers and writers that
are focused on the content of their writing rather than the power of their
personal bibliographic database manager.  As noted by Carl, the menu
is complex and learning how to use Pro-Cite effectively requires a large
investment of time.  Their is an alternative--EndNote.

Niles & Associates (developers of EndNote, EndNote Plus, and EndLink)
have actively pursued the academic Macintosh community, advertising
heavily in major Mac magazines, offering Mac-Info (an admirable effort
to make the deluge of Mac information available for easy access) and
following the interests of the Mac users more closely than any of their
competitors.  As a result, EndNote and EndNote Plus have managed to
capture the majority of the market.  This came about not as a result
of slick marketing, but the concerted effort of a small software developer
to "pay attention to the user."  Avi Rappoport (Manager of Software
Development at Niles) has been fairly active (when not too busy) in
the Internet Mac newsgroups and has responded quickly to questions
about their products.

Two examples of the responsiveness of Niles & Associates to Mac users
are:

1) EndNote Plus 1.2 includes a Word 5 Plug-In Module which allows
   Word users to access EndNote from Word's Tools Menu.  With this
   PIM you can paste a citation directly where you have located the
   insertion cursor.  Then, when you are finished with your paper,
   you can use the PIM to format the bibliography at the end of your
   Word document automatically in the punctuation style that you have
   chosen.

2) Recently, the University of California's online catalog, MELVYL,
   began offering faculty, staff, and students with dial-up access
   and a password a new downloading format for displaying citations
   to journal articles in a parsed format (i.e., the individual 
   elements of a citation, such as author, title, journal, volume,
   issue, pages, etc., are separated into individual fields).  This
   "Tags" format allows UC users a convenient way to import citations
   into their personal bibliographic database managers, assuming that
   the application supports this format.

   Personal Bibliographic Software and Niles & Associates found
   out about this new format at the same time (the UC's Division of
   Library Automation sent out this information to the interested
   software developers). Yet, although PBS has a much larger staff,
   Niles responded the quickest and least expensively to their EndNote
   users.  In order to import records downloaded with the MELVYL "tags"
   format, EndNote users need only to get a FREE copy of Niles' MELVYL
   TagLink, drop it into their EndNote Folder, open a new database,
   choose Import from the File menu, select the capture file and the
   TagLinks option, and the records will be imported into their new
   database.  Pro-Cite users will probably have to wait much longer
   for a solution and the solution promised so far is not likely to
   be free.  Pro-Cite users on the PC have to buy a copy of the Dialog
   Biblio-Link (lists for $195, I think), customize the import set-up,
   and use a much more complex means of achieving the same result. Mac
   Pro-Cite users will just have to wait--the Mac Dialog Biblio-Link
   cannot currently import the MELVYL "tags" format.   

OK, so if I haven't convinced you yet that you should seriously
consider EndNote, download a copy of the EndNote 1.2 demo program
available for anonymous FTP in the demo directory of the info-mac
archives at sumex.stanford.edu.  Join the new ENDNOTE List (the
EndNote/EndLink Users Forum) and ask any questions you may have
about using EndNote. [To join, send an e-mail message to 
listserv@ucsbvm.bitnet, leaving the subject blank, and typing 
the following as your message: "subscribe endnote yourname". You
will be automatically added to the e-mail list and receive basic
listserv commands.]

Finally, if you are a UC faculty, staff, or student, don't hesitate
to ask me for a copy of ht MELVYL TagLink.  I will be uploading it
shortly to sumex.stanford.edu.  If you don't know about the new
MELVYL "tags" format for Current Contents (now available) and
soon the other MELVYL citation databases, including the Newspaper
Abstracts Database, the Computer Articles Database, and the i
Magazine Articles Database. 

Steve
President, EndNote Users Group
  
--
Steven K. Bang                              !  The empires of the future
Sciences-Engineering Library                !    are the empires of the mind.
University of California at Santa Barbara   !      
e-mail: skbang@ucsbuxa.ucsb.edu             !           -- Winston Churchill 
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.apps