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Citation
v8.2
Reviewed
by: Howard
Carson, December
2003, send
e-mail
Published
by: askSam
Systems Inc. or go
to the web site
Requires: Windows
95 or higher, Pentium PC or faster; for word processor
integration WordPerfect 8 & 9 or 10, or Microsoft
Word 97, 2000 or 2002
MSRP: $49
(upgrade from v8), $79 (student or upgrade from earlier
version), $149 (academic), $229 (retail)
Citation
is a powerful, easy-to-learn and easy-to-use database system
designed to help with the fundamental tasks associated
with research writing: organizing notes and documenting
sources properly. The software is designed to provide academic
and technical writers with a system for entering references
as records in a database program, in predefined forms,
rather than as formatted footnotes or full bibliographic
cites prepared according to a style guide. Once the records
have been created it's possible to generate citations for
reference in any of over 1,000 predefined formats.
When
I'm not wearing my Kickstartnews editorial hat, I'm buried
deeply in one research project or another: investigative,
political, socioeconomic - you name it - on behalf of clients
from around the world. Digging for research - ferreting
out accurate information fully supported by relevant facts
- online, at different reference libraries, through interviews
with authoritative sources, by reading & analysis of
journals and other publications, is fascinating work. The
biggest challenge though is keeping track of every source
and reference as you build your research project, academic
paper, technical manual, scientific paper and so on. The
fact that you've got it all right has to be supported by
sources: the names, the dates, the places, the documentation.
Without those citations (literally, the sources for all
the factual data not developed, invented or discovered
directly by you) your efforts are just so much hearsay.
Ever read a Bibliography? Probably. A bibliography consists
of citations. Ever read Footnotes or Endnotes? Probably.
Footnotes and endnotes contain either explanations, citations
or both.
I've
seen some really smart people over the years jump into
difficult research, academic and technical projects. After
days and sometimes weeks of work, they've suddenly sat
bolt upright in their chairs, then screamed in anguish
as they realized that most of what they had written to
that point in time was not backed up by thorough notes
containing citations. Then I watched them spend more hours
(and days in some cases) poring through their footnotes
and general notes for hints to the original sources. It's
an ugly sight - painful too. So it's plainly sensible that
over many generations - hundreds of years really - lots
of methods have been developed (most of them extremely
labor-intensive) to keep track of things. Enter the digital
age, the Web, digital libraries, books and encyclopedias
on CD & DVD, along with all the traditional information
sources. Enter Citation.
So how does
it work in actual use? After installation, Citation sits
in your word processor's Tools menu. We use
Microsoft Word for just about everything and Citation integrates
perfectly. As you're conducting a project you'll encounter
written passages, excerpts, web pages and other information
that either capsulizes the source work's position on an
issue, summarizes a contribution to a research area, or
illustrates a critical concept you want to address in your
paper - whatever. Click the Citation icon in the Word toolbar,
click New on the Citation file menu, then enter the data
in the note form. Link the note to the bibliographic record
with the author's last name, the year the work was published,
source or publication name, the page/paragraph, web site/page
where the passage can be relocated. Include a few keywords
that indicate the relationship of the excerpt to your research
interests. You can enter your comments about the excerpt
along with the excerpt itself. If it's the first entry
in a new project, save it using a distinct file name. As
you continue your work over days, weeks or months, continue
entering new records into Citation. As your project nears
completion, pick a spot for your bibliography then launch
Citation and select "Bibliography from Datafile" in
the Generate menu. You'll be presented with a drop list
of bibliographic publishing styles - over a thousand -
from which you can select one that matches your project.
Citation then automatically produces a complete bibliography
based on all your data input and dumps it onto new pages
in Word at the end of the document.
So how else does it work? Well for one thing, you don't
need a word processor to use it. Citation is a daily-use
tool for supporting not just eventual bibliography, but
also for general note taking, organization and key data
storage, tracking and notes searching. Launch Citation,
then enter relevant data as you encounter it. Working on
multiple projects concurrently? Launch several instances
of Citation each running a different database, then switch
between them as needed. Citation helps narrow your focus
without limiting the scope of any project. Handy indeed.
Data you enter into Citation notes becomes searchable
via the keywords you include. That makes finding specific
notes much easier, making review much less of a chore.
As you begin the actual writing process, accessing notes
for review is really easy, citations can be found and included
with a few clicks and the publication style that's required
can be matched exactly. Citation also lists all the keywords
you've used and lets you find all the records in which
you've used any particular keyword.
We started using Citation a few years ago mainly because
the sheer volume of our research documentation had reached
critical mass (terabytes of data). Our digital and paper
filing systems had always been superb, but we were finding
that the time needed to reference even our large database
was excessive for individual research associates working
on new projects bringing new data into the system. Installing
and using Citation allowed new research to enter our master
databases through individual input while still remaining
easy to back up (no research data or documents of any kind
are stored on local hard drives or laptops anyway). Individual
researchers now always have instant access to relevant
notes in a much smaller database without sacrificing concurrent
access to the larger central database as needed. With automatic
backups of local and server drives, data is always tracked
and never lost.
Cons: Minor quibbles only. Formatting problem in the bibliography
generator when line justification is set to Full - creates
unnecessary spaces between words on any short line immediately
preceding a URL. We had to manually delete the spaces or
highlight the passage and set justification to Left which
is not a problem in small bibliographies but a potential
aggravation in large ones.
Pros: Can be
used as a standalone research database tool or as a word
processor plug-in, which means you can use
Citation while data gathering, conducting research or interviewing.
Indices that match the APA, MLA & Turabian numbering
systems; Chicago, MHRA, Harvard Bluebook (17th edition)
for law review articles, Vancouver style (ICMJE for medical
journals), AMA, GSA, USGS, AIP, AAA, Cambridge UP, and
about a thousand more. Footnote styles as well as full
bibliographic styles are included. One-click note and file
linking. If you need to prepare your paper with references
in a different style, you can reformat the information
by rerunning Citation. Preferences dialog provides selections
for different research disciplines, Journal abbreviations,
Publisher abbreviations and over a thousand bibliography
styles. Citation remains an excellent research and writing
tool and we really wouldn't be without it at our company.
Highly recommended.
Letters to the Editor are welcome and occasionally abused in public. Send e-mail to: whine@kickstartnews.com
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