newbie question: Importing citation

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gvsbdisco
Posts: 1
Joined: Tue Jul 29, 2008 4:02 pm

newbie question: Importing citation

Post by gvsbdisco »

Hi
I recently purchased bookends and am trying to incorporate it into my online library searches.

For research purposes, I primarily use the Business Source Complete database which has a GUI from EBSCOhost. Once I have tagged a citation(s) within the database, I can click an "export citation" button and a number of format options are provided. Among those are:

Direct Export to EndNote, ProCite, or Reference Manager
Generic bibliographic management software
Citations in BibTeX format
Citations in MARC21 format
Direct Export to RefWorks

I have tried the first two options and a text file (no xml tags) gets created in the following format (example):
**
TI- Understanding governance.
AU- Bradbury, Danny
JN- Backbone
PD- May/Jun2008, p20-26
PG- 5p
DT- 20080501
PT- Article
AB- The article discusses the legislation, standards and best practices in information technology (IT) governance. The Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX) and Canada's Bill 198 are government legislation. Best practices include the Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL) of Great Britain and the Control Objectives for Information and related Technology (COBIT) in North America. International Organization for Standardization (ISO) 27001 and 27002 set out security practices for IT.
DE- BEST practice
DE- INFORMATION technology
DE- CORPORATE governance
SU- UNITED States. Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002
SU- INTERNATIONAL Organization for Standardization
SU- BILLS, Legislative
GE- GREAT Britain
CO- UNITED States. Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002
CO- INTERNATIONAL Organization for Standardization
IS- 1498-086X
AN- 32062103
UR- http://search.ebscohost.com.proxy.libra ... e=bsi-live
**

My question is, how can I import this format into Bookends. Bookends doesn't seem to support importing a text file. I am fairly certain I am missing something simple.

thanks for any help you can provide.

mike
Jon
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Re: newbie question: Importing citation

Post by Jon »

Hi,

That looks kind of like RIS (a bit like Medline, too).

You can make a new filter based on RIS and edit it accordingly (name it Business Source Complete).

Tell Bookends references start with TI-

and that fields end with a Return followed by 2 capital letters.

The rest is simply placing the correct tags next to the fields you want the data imported into.

The User Guide has more information, if you need it, but it's pretty simple at this point. You can also contact tech support if you need more help.

Jon
Sonny Software
Jon
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Re: newbie question: Importing citation

Post by Jon »

BTW, I see some EBSCOHost filters use those tags, so that's what I'd use as the basis for a new filter (one of them may even work out of the box for you, or with very little tweaking).

Jon
Sonny Software
joeldi
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Joined: Sat May 03, 2008 9:35 am

Re: newbie question: Importing citation

Post by joeldi »

You've been given the techie answer... What I do is definitely less elegant but works for a tech weeny.

Select the BibTex format.

This will often create a file named citmgr. Save it to your desktop.

Either ctl-click on the file and open with TextEdit or add a .txt extension and double-click on the file. This opens it in a TextEdit window.

Hit ctl-A to select the entire citation, then hit ctl-C to copy it to the clipboard.

Go to Bookends and press cmd-shift-I. This brings up the import dialog box.

Select the BibTex format and clipboard (not file) and press OK. This should import the citation.

Alternatively you could skip the open in TextEdit step, go to the import dialog box and select file, then choose the citation file. I think you'll still need to add a .txt extension to it, though.

It's not elegant, but it works every time... Joel
Jon
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Re: newbie question: Importing citation

Post by Jon »

Hi Joel,

But that won't work with the example provided (which is not in the BibTeX format). If he outputs as BibTeX, it should work, of course.

BTW, no need to open the file or add .txt. If you drag and drop a file onto a Bookends window with the Shift key held down, Bookends will consider it a text file and offer to import it. That saves a few steps.

Jon
Sonny Software
joeldi
Posts: 14
Joined: Sat May 03, 2008 9:35 am

Re: newbie question: Importing citation

Post by joeldi »

Jon, I'm confused... I tried that before and just tried it again - Bookends wants to attach it to the citation that is currently highlighted, not import it as a citation. Thanks. Joel
Jon
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Re: newbie question: Importing citation

Post by Jon »

Bookends has to recognize a file as a text file before it will offer to import (otherwise it will offer to attach).

If the file was obtained via the Internet is probably doesn't have the right metadata. So you have to do one of two things:

1. Add ".txt" to the end of the file name

or

2. Drag and drop the file onto a Bookends db window with the Shift key held down (which forces Bookends to consider the file to be a text file).

Jon
Sonny Software
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