Bibliographic Tool
Developer: Sonny Software
Shareware: $99, $69 (Educational)
Version: 9.1
Release Date: 2006-12-04
Last Updated: 2007-02-12
Pros: Feature-rich bibliography and reference manager; Robust and easy to use; Powerful and flexible importing and output formatting; Imports Endnote databases.
Cons: Interface outdated; Reference detail view appears arbitrary.
Description
One of the more unpleasant aspects of academic writing is having to keep track of citations and bibliographic references. This is not a problem when compiling a five-pager, but writing a thesis or book without a good reference database would be a disaster. Bookends not only stores all bibliographic data in one big database, but also works with Word or Mellel in the automation of inserting citations and compiling bibliographies.
Most academics will have come across some kind of
bibliographic software, and most often than not it has
probably been Endnote, the preeminent tool for Windows.
Bookends can do everything that Endnote (also available for
MacOS X) does - only better and remarkably more reliable.
Bookend's biggest strength is its flexibility; for example
you want to import a few references which you have found in
some obscure online library, but they are formatted in a
generic format no other bibliography software can read.
Bookends probably will not read it either, but the
integrated filter manager enables you to create your very
own filter for that format. In most cases this is not as
easy as it sounds and sometimes it is simply impossible,
but it can be a real lifesaver. Or -similar scenario- your
latest essay has been accepted by the Journal of
Extra-Terrestial Discourse, but their requirements in terms
of bibliographic formatting are as outlandish as the
content of their paper - Bookends lets you edit its large
collection of pre-defined formats beyond recognition.
Bookends also lets you search online sources (it comes
with a large list of pre-configured library formats), whose
access configurations can be edited through the import
filter manager. A couple of online searches can let your
database swell up very quickly, but fortunately Bookends
features Smart Folders similar to those found in the
Finder, Apple's Mail or iTunes; for example you can create
a folder where Bookends automatically puts any references
with a certain author or published in a certain year. On
top of that it offers a very powerful search tool with SQL
and Regex capabilities. And in case you have the full
version of a reference on your hard disk (e.g. PDF
article), then you can link the file with its reference
right in Bookends.
As it is often the case with feature-rich applications,
the software is on a fine line between useful and bloated.
Bookend's interface is not terrible but it's far from being
clean and consistent. Especially the reference detail view,
where one can enter reference data manually, appears static
and can get in the way easily as soon as you are dealing
with reference types other than books and journal articles.
Bookends is a terrific piece of software and easily
beats Endnote on the Mac. It could, however, benefit from a
major interface update, considering that its closest
competitor Sente is offering similar functionality under a
much nicer surface.