Database for Citations

wolff

I guess almost everybody here has a large database of citations that we accumulated during our academic journey. What kind of software do you use to manage the citations? A regular zettelkasten or a specialised software like Zotero, Colwiz, bibdesk or pen and paper? Thanks and an excellent weekend for all!

mnlngl

I use Zotero to manage all my bibliography and have recently started to use the betterbibtex plugin to automate the export of citekeys to a .bib file. So it plays really well with bibdesk, but it is in my view, more sophisticated.

IMO Zotero is excellent because it is open source, it has excellent plugins, and is a great tool for archiving pdfs (I have a 6gb library). Additionally, it has the capacity to connect to an ipad app called papership, which syncs the whole library (pdfs included) through box.com. This allows me to underline and annotate pdfs on the go and keep one consistently organised database. Plus, Zotero extracts the underlined bits, which I then process and grind into zettel forms, so I only have to read once. This is not just underlining, mind you (see https://zettelkasten.de/posts/making-proper-marks-in-books/). What I do is actively mark what I want to extract, so that there is a cogent narrativised summary of a text that I can actively turn into a zettel. Anyway, this is a topic for another post I guess...

Now that we mention the zettelkasten, I've heard rumours about an app called The Archive made by some dudes somewhere. Apparently, it's the definite option for zettelkasten bliss.

A link to the discussion on citekeys is here: https://forum.zettelkasten.de/discussion/85/citekey-good-practice#latest

Sascha

I use BibDesk to manage my citations. I just need a dedicated software to connect a citekey to the actual bibliographical data. That is all. I wouldn't call it even managing. I see it more as a list. The rest is up to my Zettelkasten. Though, I have it redundant: The bibliographical data is saved on the individual note that uses the data. Just for safety (my last book was partially saved by that).

Now that we mention the zettelkasten, I've heard rumours about an app called The Archive made by some dudes somewhere. Apparently, it's the definite option for zettelkasten bliss.

I'd use an app to manage a BibTex-File. It is the same logic with the software for a Zettelkasten. Use an app to manage a folder full of txt-files.