Building and Using Your Electronic Library: Ibidem

In today's digital academic world, an electronic library management system is vitally important. Think about the large number of articles, chapters, books, and archival materials you come across in the course of just one semester. If you're a dedicated bibliophile, you would be keeping track of this growing bibliographic experience. It just makes no sense to lose track of what you've read. As far as the readings' contents go, your obligation to take notes on your assigned readings will pretty much take care of things. Strenghtening of your critical note-taking skills is one of the objectives of this course and will be addressed both by our discussions and by your skills in using Orbis. But that is the subject of another topic. For now, bibliography management is the matter at hand, although overlaps with note-taking are quite obvious. Ibidem is the bibliography management tool included in the Nota Bene suite of academic applications. What does this bliographic manager do?

Ibidem will

• relieve you from typing bibliographic information, such as author, title, publisher, year, etc. in your document
• relieve you from remembering the proper citation punctuation
• cite using the rules of the appropriate academic manual of style
• capitalize according to the rules of the publication's original language
• automatically manage the treatment of repeated instances of the same or similar citations
• compile subject bibliographies organized according to your keywords
• generate bibliographies automatically from the citations in your written work
• compile bibliographies to embark on your projects' preliminary research
• facilitate note-taking by automatically interacting with Nota Bene and Orbis

Starting Ibidem

Ibidem is a database application. You use it to enter bibliographic data. Ibidem comes with a very good on-line tutorial. To access the tutorial, click on the Ibidem icon in Nota Bene, then Help, Contents..., then click on Tutorial, as shown below.

Ibidem also comes equipped with three different bibliographic databases; one of them, "Tutor," is used for the tutorial. You will want to create your own Ibidem database as soon as possible. And you won't run out of room: this application can hold virtually unlimited amounts of data.

Ibidem pointers (what they don't teach you in school or in the tutorial)

The following are helpful pointers, learned through experience, and not necessarily available in the tutorial or the on-line Help system. The text in italics is set off in order to highlight a feature or best use of a feature.

Data Entry Templates

Ibidem comes equipped with numerous templates for the user to enter the data according to the type of publication. These templates include Article in a Journal, Book, Chapter or Article in an Edited Book, Dissertation, Archival Records & Manuscripts, and several others in an extensive list. A template is selected from the list that appears after clicking on the downward pointing arrow to the right of the template in use, as shown below.

PLEASE NOTE THAT AN ENTRY TEMPLATE REMAINS IN USE AFTER ENTERING THE DATA FOR A PARTICULAR WORK. THE PROGRAM ASSUMES THAT THE NEXT ENTRY IS OF THE SAME TYPE OF PUBLICATION. THUS, AFTER ENTERING DATA DEALING WITH, FOR EXAMPLE, AN ARTICLE IN A JOURNAL, AND ANOTHER TITLE TO BE ENTERED IS A BOOK, THE BOOK ENTRY TEMPLATE IS SELECTED TO REPLACE THE ARTICLE ENTRY TEMPLATE LEFT FROM BEFORE.

ALSO PLEASE NOTE THAT THE TEMPLATE USED TO ENTER A TITLE WILL BE THE ONE USED WHEN YOU NEXT VIEW THAT TITLE. CHANGING TEMPLATE VIEWS HAS NO EFFECT ON THE DATA.

Foreign Language Titles

Ibidem handles capitalization rules very effectively when citing. English-language titles will be capitalized automatically, according to the bibliographic rules of English and the academic style (if in use). A non-English-language title will be capitalized exactly as the user types it once it is tagged by the program (click on the drop-down arrow that will appears along the Title and Subsequent Cite Title fields as the title is entered). The case tag will be placed at the end of the title, as shown below. The titles will be properly capitalized both in references (footnotes/endonotes) and in bibliographies.

IN THE ABSENCE OF A CASE TAG, IBIDEM WILL CITE OR GENERATE THE BIBLIOGRAPHY WITH THE TITLE CAPITALIZED ACCORDING TO ENGLISH-LANGUAGE RULES.

Keywords

One of Ibidem's most powerful features is provided by the "Keywords" field. This field, along with a few others, such as "Annotation," appears in all entry templates. By entering your own keywords, you will be giving your database your own stamp of categorization. You will generate reading lists based on your own search criteria. Keyword searches are normally done without regard to case, that is, it makes no difference if the keyword is entered as "Peru" or "peru" or if the term being searched for is capitalized or not. Keywords are separated by semicolons.

TIP: FOR THE SAKE OF EASE OF READING WITHIN THE ENTRY TEMPLATE, IT IS ADVISABLE TO INSERT A SPACE AFTER EACH SEMICOLON.

As you enter more titles, you run the risk of creating too many different keywords, potentially defeating the purpose of using this feature when you fail to find keywords because you search for them believing you wrote them a certain way, when in fact you wrote them differently. For example, one could enter keywords to denote the category of "social control" in several different ways, for example,

• social control
• soc cont
• social cont
• soc control

You get the picture.

TIP: IT IS HIGHLY ADVISABLE, PRIOR TO TYPING A KEYWORD, TO CLICK ON THE DOWN-POINTING ARROW TO THE RIGHT OF THE TYPING AREA IN THE KEYWORD FIELD. AS YOU ENTER EACH LETTER OF A KEYWORD, THE EXISTING LIST OF KEYWORDS IS SHOWN, GOING BACK AND FORTH ALPHABETICALLY, SHOWING YOU THE KEYWORDS ALREADY ON YOUR LIST. THIS WILL AID YOU ENORMOUSLY IN KEEPING YOUR KEYWORDS CONSISTENT AND MINIMIZING REDUNDANCIES WHICH MIGHT POSE OBSTACLES TO SUCCESSFUL SEARCHES. SEE THE EXAMPLE BELOW, WHICH SHOWS A CASE OF REDUNDANCY BY LISTING BOTH "SOC STRUCT" AND "SOC STRUCTURE":

Linking Ibidem with Orbis Note-Taking (you'll like this)

Ibidem comes equipped with the capability to join automatically the keywords you assign to a particular work -- along with the entire bibliographic citation -- to your note-taking efforts. Furthermore, keywords entered into an Ibidem record become part of your Orbis research database. This integration of bibliographic, note-taking, and word-processing activities is effortless.

Click on Ibidem's Generate menu item. Then click on Orbis Note Form (see below).

You will then be presented with a choice of three paper sizes, including an 8.5"x11" sheet, a 5"x8" note card, and 4"x6" note card. Choose the one you wish, click OK, then click on "View Results" on the Ibid Formatter window. You will be taken to the word processing window with a Nota Bene document opened, containing all the vital bibliographic and keyword information, ready for you to take notes. It will look something like the image below, which uses the 5"x8" note card layout.

Once you finish taking notes (by the way, this can be notes on your reading or anything else, including lectures, discussions... anything), you can let Orbis index all your writing. You will then be able to search and retrieve texts from any file that match your terms and search conditions. It's like having your personal search engine inside your own computer. For more on Orbis, click here.