[Papyrus-L] Re: Other packages

[Sandra Alston]

Hugh Gunz wrote:
 
> The world looks depressingly like a monopoly run by ISI (who now own
> ProCite, EndNote and Reference Manager). They have their own crude
> comparison between the packages at
> http://www.isiresearchsoft.com/rscompare.asp. You're forced to go to
> Reference Manager if you follow the ISI route and have true networking
> needs (i.e. several users needing to edit references simultaneously)

One major aspect to think about is subject access. Pro-Cite is the only
ISI product which allow you to produce subject bibliographies (as opposed
to bibliographies on a subject). Library Master can do this.

> Library Master at
> http://www.balboa-software.com/, although a quick look at that suggests a
> number of limitations, in particular that it uses the Papyrus way of
> converting document files: it scans the file to convert the codes, so that
> (so far as I can tell from the documentation) the codes are lost and the
> conversion can't be undone later).

Library Master produces a completely separate document after conversion 
(with a different file name suggested) so that the original document 
remains as formatted by you. 

> The ISI stable seem to be an odd mixture of packages, each of which have
> their good and bad points, but none of which seems to combine the good
> points of all. EndNote is clearly very popular, but a quick look at it by
> comparison with the other two suggested that it was rather more primitive.
> That, of course, may be (as they say) A Good Thing.

EndNote is popular as it has a fairly short learning curve; because of this
it is not as sophisticated as some of the other packages.

Sandra Alston

-- 
Sandra Alston
Canadiana Specialist
University of Toronto Library
(sandra.alston at utoronto.ca)