Paul Chen has suggested that I post our discussion of features to this forum. Specifically, I think it would be useful if users described what they do (or would like to do) with Biblioscape, so let me begin.
I gather news about Russia daily from the internet, create a Reference, copy the text into a Document, and place it into various topic folders. Later, when I have more time, I read the Document text more carefully and highlight the parts I want to put into a Note. I then create a Note, link the Reference to it, and paste the highlighted text into the Note.
Each note serves as a potential article/project. When a Note gets very large, I create a child folder for it and copy related parts of the text to the child folder. All links are only to my parent folder, however, since it is tedious to re-create the same links in all the child folders. Not all of my entries, most of which are from web sites, have clear authors and titles, so I have to identify them by adding a distinctive number in the "Link Comment."
For example, one of my parent folders is called "Russian Economy." It has about 100 records linked to it, listed [e1] to [e100], entered into the “Linked Comment." Under that I have child folders on "Banking," "Stock Market," and "Unemployment," which contain my quotes. At the end of each quote I put “[e#]” so that I can search for the source in the parent folder.
This way of working with Notes allows me to copy items from various folders to one or more Notes without losing the ability to find the original source. It works pretty well, except for the fact that in Bib6 I cannot sort the "Link Comment" row to quickly find the note I need. Also, for some reason, Bib6 enters items randomly, rather than at the end of my list of linked notes, as I would like.
1) Does anyone have any suggestions for how to use Notes more effectively for long article/book writing?
2) Will Bib7 have features that will allow text in Documents to be moved around in various Notes while staying linked to the original (I guess you could think of this as akin to footnoting)?
3) How do YOU use Biblioscape, and what features do you need?
I've been using Biblioscape
I've been using Biblioscape since version 4 to create manuscripts and reports in APA format. I appreciate the capability to use other output styles easily, but all the publications suitable for my work use APA format, as do most of my colleagues, so I've never used anything else.
I use Biblioscape mainly to maintain a literature database, organise links between references, and format manuscripts. I used the Notes module at first, but didn't find it powerful or comfortable enough to work with permanently. Version 7 seems to have a lot of improvements in this area, and I look forward to seeing them.
Dennis
Note taking for articles and reports
I use Biblioscape to take notes when I have an article or report to write. First, I gather sources and record them in the reference module. Then I go to the notes module and create parent folders on the topics I know that I need to research. Then I go through my references and start gathering notes, which I record in the notes module and link to the proper reference.
This is where I start having trouble with Biblioscape 6. Ideally, what I would like to do is make a note in the notes module and then link it to which ever references are appropriate. Then, I would like to be able to shoot the entire note over to my document along with the proper reference - I usually use APA in-text references, but it would be good to also be able to do end notes or foot notes. Then, I would like an easy way to indicate that I have used the note in the notes module without changing my notes tree, which is organized topically.
What I currently do is link my notes module notes to whatever references I have, then when I start to write, I copy and past my note from the notes module and then go to the references module to shoot the reference over - but if I have more than one reference for a note, I have to manually fix it in the document.
That's mainly how I use Biblioscape. Though I use it for articles, I would do the same if using it for writing a book.
Dissertation writing
Most of the time I use Biblioscape to work on a PhD dissertation. I have folders with titles of the main sections of a dissertations such as Introduction, Literature Review, Methodology and so on. Under each section I have child folders that work as "sub-chapters". Then I have also child folders that do not belong to the body of text itself, but are notes to remind me of important arguments to consider and so on. Those are linked to references for example. Through this way I expect to have a draft ready sometime in the future that will later be re-written with the actual citations.
I also use notes module to endless lists and outlines which have their own categories, including projects and proposals.
I would very much like to use Biblioscape as my internet Bookmarks organizer too, but I did not manage to create a smooth system for this task yet.
Fernando Soares
Florida Institute of Technology
Version 7 improved in this
Version 7 improved in this area a lot. It will be much easier to do what you want in version 7. Also, more features will be added in 7.x releases.
I will comment on
I will comment on information management features in version 7. It will make things easier than version 6. Instead of putting your reference record into different folders, you tag records with categories in version 7. The same set of tags (categories) can be also used to tag notes records. When you go to that category in categories module, all the tagged references, notes, tasks, etc. will be show together. For example, you can easily see all the references and notes about "Russian Economy" in one pane.
The linking in version 7 has been made much easier to create and manage. I don't see why you want to link the notes under "Russian Economy" to their parent. The parent-child relationship already showed they are related. Version 7 organizes notes under folders too. We will add a "Composistion" tab on the right with all the notes under a single folder combined into a single doucment. This will make writing books much easier. The individual notes can be linked to a category. Under that category, those notes can be re-used and re-positioned. At the same time, the linking between a note and references won't be broken.