I had to spend the entire day today trying to migrate my citation library from EndNote to Zotero. I had difficulty getting out my data from end not and then, the worst part was , when I had to change big chunks of my thesis by hand to fit the zotero citation code. It was not fun going through all that literature… deleting citation… adding new… deleting citation… adding new.
I haven’t put much thought into this but since my fingers are sore with pain from hitting all the “keyboard shortcuts” –some of which I am sure Chopin and Rachmaninov would have difficulty performing– and my eyes burn after reading almost every page on the internet; I think, I think there need be a user information protection act in the world.
What I mean is:
my data is mine and I must be able to take it with me from one application to another without any difficulty.
Unfortunately in the software industry that means the use of a shared platform which needs a dominant industry-wide shared platform for data. something that is yet to appear in many software types. Reference management is only one example.
Aside from all this. Zotero is great software. All my graduate student need are satisfied and I am very happy that it fetches bibliography info from webpages. EndNote on the other hand is verbose, cluttered, inefficient and it will keep your data with a guarantee that you can’t take it anywhere. EndNote’s Logo says “Bibliographies made easy”! and to be honest those guys need to look that word up in a dictionary (easy that is).
P.S. There is a hight chance that a user info protection act already exists in the industry. If so, forgive me I live in a(n) (ever-)developing disconnected part of the world and I’m too tired to look for this.
