A quiz...

[macula]

Hi everyone,

Here's what I need to do in the least painful way possible

I have a folder in my Bookends library that contains approximately 350+ items in 15 static groups.
I need to produce an aggregated bibliography in which all items will be categorized by group name. So far so good.
The problem is that many of my items belong in more than one group, and there must be *no* duplicates in the aggregated bibliography.

What to do?

Obviously, I need to ensure that each item is in one and only one group. How can I do that in the fastest possible way, in your opinion?

The best way I've found—but far from satisfactory—is to check every pair of groups for overlap using the AND operator. This means 15*14/2=105 such checks, plus the time needed to process each duplicate item.

I just can't afford to spend that much time on this right now. Any smarter users out there with a brilliant idea, perhaps? Jon, maybe you could think of something?

Thanks a lot.

[Jon]

Hm, I must say I'm not sure exactly what is driving this and exactly what you want for a final output. Give that, might a Subject Bibliography be of help?

Jon
Sonny Software

[macula]

Well, what is driving this is a requirement for a thematically categorized bibliography with no duplicates (sorry, I'm just repeating myself…)

It's for a research proposal and for some reason they want that.

The output should be something like this:

A. Bibliography on tulips
1. ….
2. …
3. …

B. Bibliography on roses
1. …
2. …
3. …

C. Bibliography on gardening
1. …
2. …
3. …

with "Bibliography on gardening" not including any items from either category A or category B.

I will try the subject bibliography thing, though I suspect that at some point I'll have to manually ensure that each item is uniquely assigned.

Thanks

[Jon]

Looks like a subject bibliography to me. You can base a subject bibliography on groups (and smart groups). One feature of smart groups is that you can set them to look for references that *are not in* one or more static groups. It might be possible to combine these (smart groups where the references meet certain criteria and are not in static group a, b, and c, and a subject bibliography). It might also be easier just to weed out the duplicates by hand after the subject bibliography was generated.

Jon
Sonny Software

[macula]

Thanks a lot, Jon. You know what, I think that last suggestion of yours was a revelation. Too much automation in life, and I tend to forget that "manual' is sometimes best.

[Jon]

Yup. One other "trick" that I'll mention: you can instantly see what groups a reference belongs to by selecting it in the List View and holding down the Shift and Option keys. All matching groups will highlight in yellow. Don't know if that's useful here, but it might be, and if not it might come in handy in the future.

Jon
Sonny Software

[macula]

Yes, you've mentioned this feature before and it's a lifesaver.

But in the meantime, I found a semi-automatic solution that's actually better than manual

I will produce all the subject bibliographies, paste them in a word processor and sort the paragraphs alphabetically. That way I will easily find out which items belong in more than one group. From there it's a piece of cake to remove those items from the superfluous groups. I'd rather do that with a copy of my library though!