CNET Editors' review
Mac users have several good choices available when it comes to bibliography-management applications. Bookends is among the best, and its trial version certainly merits a look from anyone who spends much time working with large numbers of academic and technical citations. This app makes it easy to search for, download, and organize reference materials, as well as quickly create tightly formatted bibliographies in a variety of word processors--including excellent integration with Mellel and Word 2008.
You can search across and save documents from any standard source, from PubMed, JSTOR, and the Library of Congress to Amazon, Google Scholar, and even any individual institutions to which you have access, and Bookends can even import journal articles into existing bibliographies. The interface is not particularly attractive but it's hard-working and fairly customizable, with many different options for ordering, labeling, and groups. Bookends' styled virtual note cards can be a big help when you need to annotate your references, and its new features like tag clouds and metatypes can be invaluable in organizing and navigating your documents.
With a built-in HTTP server and good third-party app and database integration, Bookends is also a good choice for collaboration, even with users using other reference-management applications. There's a lot of competition in this category, and Bookends has only gotten better in recent versions.
Publisher's Description
From Sonny Software:
Bookends is a full featured and cost-effective bibliography/reference and information management system for students and professionals. With Bookends you can easily import references (information about journal articles, books, etc.) from EndNote, and directly search and import from PubMed, the Web of Science, Google Scholar, JSTOR, Amazon, the Library of Congress, and hundreds of other online sources. Use a built-in browser to download references with pdfs or and/or web pages with a click. Automatic searches of PubMed let you discover articles as soon as they are published. Powerful group-based searches, with static, smart, and virtual groups. Live Search lets you further refine searches as you type. Annotate your database with reference cross-linking with defined relationships and comments. Attach any file (such as a pdf) to a reference and view or open it instantly. There are options to automatically download, rename and organize pdf files on-the-fly from the Internet (requires access permission) or from your hard drive. Scan your word processor files and automatically generate finished manuscripts with properly formatted bibliographies. Access the power of Bookends directly from MS Word (including Word 2008), Mellel, and Nisus Writer Pro. Scan Pages '08 and '09 files and OpenOffice 3 files, or RTF files saved from any word processor. Share your references over the Internet with anyone, on any platform (you, but not people who access your databases, must have a broadband connection).
What's new in this version:
- - Notecard headers You can create notecards that consist of a header or have two parts, a header and content. The header will have a slightly darker color than the content and will be displayed in bolded and enlarged text. A header is created in the Notes field by placing the # character before the text (Bookends takes care of this for you if you use the command "Add Notecard With Header" (or with the note stream showing, click on the Add pop-up menu or right-click on the note strea... See all new features
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All versions:
4.8 starsout of 36 votes
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Current version:
0 stars Be the first to review this product -
My rating:
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"Useful tool in research writing"
Version: Bookends 11.2
Pros
Manages large bibliographies, can reformat citations easily
Cons
none that I have found
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"The best citation manager available in all OS"
Version: Bookends 11.1
Pros
All. Does function.
Cons
None. Try EndNote for believe me!
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"Does everything that a Bibliographer needs"
Version: Bookends 11.1
Pros
Flexible and reasonably intuitive
Cons
A little complex
Summary
Comprehensive, therefore needs a little effort to get the best from
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"Excellent Mac bibliographic/reference manager software"
Version: Bookends 11.0.9
Pros
Consistently works. Ability to search for pdfs of references on line. Developer very responsive to questions and problems and will incorporate useful suggestions in future versions.
Cons
Autocomplete paper from pdf works inconsistently. Integration with Word 2008 using scripts not as seamless as previous versions.
Summary
Migrated from EndNote several years ago and haven't looked back. This is an excellent mac bibliographic / reference manager.
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"Great program & Support"
Version: Bookends 11.0.6
Pros
Excellent integration with all the major word publishing programs, provides rock solid database for bibliographic references
Cons
somewhat difficult to learn
Summary
Great academic tool. You won't be dissappointed.
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"Works perfectly in all respects"
Version: Bookends 10.6.3
Pros
Handles references and bibliographies excellently, it is perfectly integrated into my word processor, Mellel. It produces as many formats as needed, and making specific formats for journals not in the list, is easy.
Cons
There are no cons
Summary
Bookends is way superior in all respects to other bibliography software.
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"Better biblio app ever"
Version: Bookends 10.5
Summary
This review was originally posted on VersionTracker.com.
Full featured, stable, amazing support, great community (via forum), rich availability of formats for all sorts of biblio, never lost an entry .....
This app is the only reason that makes MacOS the only OS for me ..... -
"best Bibliography app on the Mac"
Version: Bookends 10.4.2
Summary
This review was originally posted on VersionTracker.com.
So many outstanding features that I cannot even start here. I only want to point out the quality of this app by pointing out the sort of features that are put into a .x.x release:
* completely overhauled ability to define fields and thus generate formats that are much closer to official guidelines such as MLA or APA than those offered by other bibliography apps.
* ability to define links between bibliography entries (more than that, they can even take specific values such as â??review ofâ??, or â??chapter inâ??)
Definitely a five star app and definitely the app with the best user support I know. -
"followup"
Version: Bookends 10.1.1
Summary
This review was originally posted on VersionTracker.com.
I wish to provide a followup to my previous comments. I have reconciled my differences with the developer and am on better terms with him -- several have written me that their primary reason for using Bookends was his incredible support, so my experience was definitely not the norm.
Mac users are lucky because there are at least three strong contenders in the area of bibliographical management software: EndNote, Bookends, and Sente. Over time I continue to gain a better understanding of the complexities of these programs, which really must cover several distinct areas: Formatting bibliographies (and interoperability with various word processors), reference and attachment management (in the app), online searching and downloading, and note-taking.
No one program is perfect in all areas (nor will one program suit everyone's needs), but at this point in time, Bookends is probably the strongest contender overall. Bookends continues to be improved at an incredible rate: 10.1.1 is already as much of an advance over 10 as 9.1/9.2 was over 9; the inline reference editing introduced in 10.1 is wonderful. -
"Bookends vs. EndNote vs. Sente"
Version: Bookends 10.0.1
Summary
This review was originally posted on VersionTracker.com.
Bookends is currently the most full-featured bibliography program available for the Mac (others, such as Sente, are close behind, however, and may surpass it in the future), and its developer is obviously very committed to it and updates it very regularly. Version 9 was a miracle of improvements and the developer didn't even charge an upgrade for it from version 8, which is just amazing. Some may disagree, but I and others feel that version 10 is a much more modest change from version 9, but the developer is obviously deserving of his reasonable $29 upgrade fee.
That being said, I have a number of reservations about the program and its developer. First of all, the program itself doesn't feel very responsive, and there are reports from several users that it bogs down with databases of several thousand references or more, even when the cache is increased (and one could argue, why should a cache require manual adjustment?). This may be due in part to the fact that Bookends is written using a development environment and language called RealBASIC, which appears to impose many constraints in terms of how the program "feels" and looks. Indeed, in terms of UI, this program is a far cry from the best-of-breed OS X programs. Furthermore, some of the early UI decisions, such as a non-configurable reference entry window with fixed-size fields that require individual scrollbars or otherwise button clicks to view their entire contents, is becoming a handicap now that the program handles many more fields: in version 10, the reference window had to be broken down into tabs, and as evidenced by a long discussion forum at the Sonny Software site, many users are upset with the limitations that it imposes, such as the move of the "Abstracts" field from the primary to a secondary tab. The developer promises a workaround, but I wonder how long he can keep everyone happy, and there is always going to be a compromise with this approach.
A couple of other notes. The developer of Bookends is also one of the most mercurial fellows I've ever dealt with, and while he is devoted to those who constantly praise him and his program, he doesn't handle criticism very well and even resorts to deleting users' posts and identities from his forums without evidence of bad behavior. However, he himself openly criticizes the competition, namely EndNote, which is bad form. Contrast this with the forums of DEVON Technologies, where I actually mentioned alternatives to DEVONThink Pro; the moderator expressed gratitude at the existence of competition.
For those who criticize EndNote: I too have expressed disappointment with the pace of development, but it's a myth that the company (Thomson Scientific) doesn't care about its customers. First of all, the program has improved much more rapidly under Thomson's direction than it ever did under its original owner, Niles and Associates. Second, users need to remember that the development of a cross-platform application (for Mac and Windows) is a much more complicated affair than a single-platform app such as Bookends. Indeed, because EndNote's user base is so much larger, and includes government clients, EndNote has to comply with complicated regulations such as US Government Accessibility Guidelines that the developer of Bookends can simply ignore. Lastly: while more costly than Bookends, EndNote looks and behaves much more like a well-designed OS X program, it's fast, and it handles thousands of references with aplomb. I've been using EndNote since 1991 (version 1), and I've never had an instance of database corruption, whereas I've observed it several times in the year or so that I've been using Bookends (although I've not yet lost any data)
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