EndNotes

[Adelaide9216]

Hello,

my university provides EndNotes for free (citation manager software) and offers workshops on how to use it. But I did try and attended a workshop, and I barely remember anything from it and the program is not user friendly to me. Do you have any other citation manager software to recommend to me? I'm definetly going to need one during my master's studies.

[fuzzylogician]

For the record, I use (Xe)LaTeX and BibTex with the natbib package. My bibliography manager is BibDesk (on a mac), which allows me to save details on each of my entries, including author, year, etc., as well as the pdf and any comments. The pdfs themselves as saved in a dedicated folder on dropbox, so the whole thing syncs across my home and office computer. 

[Purkachu]

Highly recommend Mendeley. It's not the most advance citation manager but very user-friendly and great for collaboration with others, and it's free too. You may start there and then migrate to a different system once you know what you look for or what features you need most.

[rising_star]

I'm a fan of Zotero personally. I'm guessing that in one of those posts linked to above I expound on why.

[AP]

Zotero

[Adelaide9216]

Ok, I've installed Mendeley and BibDesk on my computer. I've kinda got a grip on Mendeley who appears to be quite user-friendly. Does anyone here have some sort of online guide resource to use both? My university only offers training on EndNotes.

I am also confused whenever I have to click on "export" when I have an article, it never seems to work and to export it to my databases. 

Also, is there a possibility that your whole library can get deleted by accident? Can it be saved automatically? Do you have to do a back-up? My biggest fear with relying on technology is losing access to all the info I will have collected.

Edited April 14, 2017 by Adelaide9216

[fuzzylogician]

1 minute ago, Adelaide9216 said:

Also, is there a possibility that your whole library can get deleted by accident? Can it be saved automatically? Do you have to do a back-up? My biggest fear with relying on technology is losing access to all the info I will have collected.

Copies on two local machines, copy in the cloud, and two external hard drives backing up daily. (Learning from experience, after my old laptop died in a fiery blaze at the end of my first year and I lost practically all of my materials from that year.)

(There are lots of tutorials you can find online if you google "bibdesk tutorial". I'm sure that's also true for Mendeley.)

[Purkachu]

there are several videos and instructions right on Mendeley website for you to look at. you can also just google if you have very specific questions.

as @fuzzylogician said, the rule of thumb is to do your own back-up at multiple places. Mendeley does have automatic online back-up function and they give each free user 2GB of online storage, Mendeley also stores all your pdfs locally in a folder that you specify. what you can do is to save several copies of that whole folder at multiple places:

• cloud storage (Dropbox, Box, OneDrive, Google Drive, etc.)
• on your work computer as well as personal computer (if you have more than one)
• different drives in your computer (if you have multiple)
• on external hard drives (you should have at least one of this)
• If you have a close friend who is interested and you can trust, you guys may look into CrashPlan. they have a free function where you and your friend install CrashPlan on your computers and connect, then it will automatically back-up your data onto your friend's computer and your friend's data onto your computer

[BlueNahlchee]

Mendeley all the way!