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Updates:
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Assignment
Overview / Short Version
There are three parts to this assignment. You will be...
- ...using the DePaul Library to get full-text access to copyrighted material that
the library has paid for and which is not available on the web except as
abstracts.
- ...getting citations from scholar.google.com (Note: you will
register DePaul library with scholar.google.com); saving them as BibTex
format in a text file where you are collecting them; importing them into
the (free) JabRef bibliographic software; merging them with other
bibliographic sources you already have in your personal library;
exporting them as an XML file. This XML file, and upgrades to it
over the years, should follow you for the rest of your life.
- ...using the XML file as the source for your Word documents, by
replacing the secret Sources.xml file with your own XML file; building a
bibliography and set of citations in your Word document. You should
never have to actually type in the details of a citation again, and your
bibliographies should always be generated automatically. You
should be able to produce a bibliography and citations in any style with
the press of a few buttons, automatically. Note: occasionally you may
have to clean up a citation, which you can do in the Word bibliography editor.
The first part is tedious because the Library software is confusing and hard
to use. If you don't use it every couple of weeks you'll forget how to
navigate it. The only purpose of it is to get you the actual text copies of
journal articles that are otherwise not available. And, of course, this
could be essential. In general, Google does a better job of searching for titles
and has, to a large degree, replaced the cumbersome library searches.
The second and third parts are relatlive easy, if you follow the steps in
the assignment. It is like paint-by-the-numbers. The goal of these two steps
(and I consider this very important for any graduate student) is to create a
personal bibliography file that follows you around for the rest of your
life. In essesence you will: use Google Scholar to get a citation in BibTex
format which you copy into a text file. Repeat for all the new citations you
want. Use JabRef to merge with your existing XML sources file. Use that file
to easily create a bibliography in your Word document. (And note, you can
translate your XML into many other formats for use with other software as
well.)
If I had to choose one or the other, I care more about the second and third
steps than I do about the first. So, I've made them easy. A librarian can
always help you with the first. You don't need to use the library at all to
create your bibliography file and use it in Word.