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In an article of <25 Mar 90 21:28:56 GMT>, ireland@ac.dal.ca writes:

 iA>Does anybody out there have experience getting Reference Update files 
 iA>into
 iA>EndNote?  I'm considering writing a little program to do this (probably 
 iA>in
 iA>HyperCard).  Will EndLink do the job?  Any suggestions would be 
 iA>appreciated.

The hinge here is the format of the references themselves. Currently EndNote 
will only import BibIx/Refer and ProCite (or similar tab-delimited text files) 
and is persnickety about the latter. I've not pirchased EndLink because I feel 
that such a facility should have been included with EndNote. The manual 
blithely describes using "cut and paste" to build up your reference library. 
They say that doing this takes only 10 seconds "when you get the hang of it". 
They say that's good considering how long it takes setting up a custom format 
of your text file to get it to import automatically.

My answer is "balls"! The Refer/BibIx format is not all that different from 
MedLars and/or Dialog. (For some reason they think that GratefulMed Mac is some 
kind of file format, B-T-W). In other words - they could have built the 
facility in. BookEnds has done just that. However, being in HyperCard, BookEnds 
has some limitations, one being that it's slow and the other that it's harder 
to get the citations into a paper without some extra steps. But it does cull 
out duplicates - something that EndNote does not do and which I feel is a MAJOR 
shortcoming. Very few of us are hand loading these things. I typically download 
over a hundred references per session (in one case -  1500). Duplication is 
inevitable especially when using different search strategies. EndNote's major 
stength lies in its DA and ease of citation and its ability to format them 
automatically within your paper.

My solution is that I load my raw refs into BookEnds, cull out the dupes and 
flag the different types of refernces - i.e book, monograph, journal article, 
etc. I then use the Format Manager to write out a Refer/BibIx text file flagged 
for the various categories in EndNote and then import those files into EndNote. 
I maintain both the EndNote and BookEnd files.


Leo Bores, M.D.





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