Newbie question: import from formatted bibliography file on my computer

[Prof Sue]

I have a reference file with over 2000 citations, in Word format, from a book I wrote. (The file is easily available in .rtf and Scrivener formats, too.) I'm trying to import those citations into Bookends, but from the "Import from Existing Bibliography" link, all I can find are web links. I'm trying to link to a file on my computer. Help please! (Thanks.)

[Jon]

You're supposed to paste the bibliography containing the references into the field (on the web site) and see if the reference metadata could be retrieved (they must have DOIs assigned to them). If so, you'll see a down arrow to click, which will show you which it found and let you import them into your Bookends database.

Please see the user guide (Help menu) about using "import from existing bibliography'". It has a much better description of this as well as images showing you what to do.

Jon
Sonny Software

P.S. CrossRef limits you to 1000 references a month.

[Prof Sue]

Thanks, this moves me a bit forward. Some are imported from the web, but some have the wrong article. (Nothing for you to worry about -- I'm still exploring.)
But what I REALLY want to do is somewhat different. I want to import the authors and year, and then a "title" field that has everything else in my file. (I realize that's not taking advantage of all of your program -- but it would keep all the manual formatting that I did on the 6th edition of my book, which is sometimes not captured by any standard rules, given the quirks of APA formatting.) I've done some of that by cut-and-paste from my file into Bookends, and the result is what I want to achieve -- though it takes a lot of time.
I'll keep exploring...

[Jon]

That's tough. It might be possible to create a crude import filter using the "Source" fields to parse your references (in a text file) into Bookends references. It would not be great, though.

As far as APA formatting, Bookends does a pretty good job. What quirk can't it handle?

Jon
Sonny Software

[Prof Sue]

Some examples of APA formatting problems: (1) , a part of a journal title needs to be italicized, if for example it contains the name of a book that is being reviewed. (2) Usually, issues of journals are omitted, but if the journal begins with page 1 for each issue, then the journal issue (as well as volume) are required. Even more weird: some journals (J. of Humanistic Psychology comes to mind) have the usual continuous pagination throughout the volume (no issue required) some years, and more magazine-type non-continuous pagination (issue required) other years. I'm sure there are other exceptions, but those make the point.

[Prof Sue]

In my post above, I should have said "article title for a journal" instead of "journal title." Here's an example:
Moodley, R. (2000). The Right to be Desperate and Hurt and Anger in the presence of Carl Rogers: A racial/psychological identity approach. Counselling Psychology Quarterly, 13, 353–364.

[Jon]

Yes, they do. But in the case of italicizing words in the title, you would do that in the reference. The italics will carry through to the final formatted title.

Jon
Sonny Software