Hi Jesse,
Searching around on refworks today, I see that this was already the subject of a thread by you on dm-l. Sorry I didn't see it earlier (and forgot that this had come up).
I've spent the day playing with it, and I must say it looks pretty good: the format is more or less as detailed as ProCite (which seems to be better than end note), and it does everything one might want. It took a bit of work to import ProCite without losing information (the output styles they want you to use have terrible information loss), but onceI built a Procite > RefWorks stylesheet it went really well.
Apart from the fact that it is totally non-standards based (but then reference managers don't seem to have an official standard as far as I can tell), it seems really good.
It seems to have the same, or perhaps slightly better, field division than refdb (refdb.sourceforge.net), and I've never been able to get refdb working right. I'm off to try wikindx now.
-d
On Tue, 2006-21-02 at 19:23 -0700, Jesse Hurlbut wrote:
My university has an institutional license for Refworks. I've recently started using it. I used Endnote briefly and this seems like a product with similar features except that it runs entirely on line (as opposed to installing software and maintaining data on a local drive).
Refworks will allow you to import data from on-line library and database searches or you can import from Endnote v. 8 or higher. You can also input individual entries using a form which follows any number of different style templates (including user-defined).
Advanced search capabilities allow you to search through your bibliographies (which can be organized in different folders). Refworks will also pull up any exact duplicate records or "near matches" to help you clean out redundancies.
Bibliography output formats include Word for Windows 2000 or later, Word for Mac 98 or later, HTML, Rich Text Format, and Text format. Bibliographies can be exported in any number of pre-programmed styles (Chicago, MLA, Turabian, etc.). It looks like there are well over 100 different styles, but you can also create your own (or modify existing styles). It didn't take me long to create my own export style, and I'd think that most people on this list wouldn't struggle much figuring it out. The process will intimidate many into using one of the presets. There is a downloadable plug-in called Write-n-Cite that allows you to run an abbreviated version of RefWorks inside Microsoft Word. I haven't tried it.
Data (or portions thereof) can be exported into XML, tab delimited, "RefWorks Tagged Format" (for sharing with other RefWorks users), a citation list, BibTex, or directly into EndNote, Reference Manager, or ProCite).
There are a handful of start-up options and preferences (which folder to start with, how many reference to display on a screenpage, etc.). The site can run in English, French, Spanish, or in one of four other oriental languages. The interface is satisfactory and basically intuitive (by which, I mean that I can leave it alone for several months and still find my way around when I come back to it). There is good documentation via on-line tutorials and helpfiles.
I'm not associated with RefWorks in any way. The program seems to do all the basic things I need to do, so, I'll probably continue to use it for my relatively simple needs. If my institution let its subscription lapse, I probably would not spend the money for an individual subscription. But I don't rely that heavily on a bibliography manager at this point.
Jesse jesse_hurlbut@byu.edu