Personal “bibliographic” databases programs like Citation combine many of the characteristics
of structured database programs with some of those associated with textual database
programs. In addition to sorting and selecting features, bibliographic database programs
offer features that are designed specifically to deal with the predominance of textual
materials and rules for organizing citations that are associated with the academic
and research environments.
Unlike standard database programs, bibliographic database programs provide
you with predefined data entry forms.
These “forms” are specifically designed to hold information for different types of source
works associated with research writing; that is, the different forms display only
those fields associated with information you need to include in your database for
that particular type of source work.
Rather than entering information as a formatted citation for a journal article, for
instance, you will enter the basic components for citing an article, along with
keywords and a brief summary, in a form:
Citation offers you a choice, as you are entering data, of forms
that correspond to nearly every type of resource material associated with academic research and
writing addressed in any of the major academic style guides.
Unlike standard database programs, bibliographic databases are able to use multiple forms in a
single view of the database.
And unlike the online database collections, records in a bibliographic database can be edited
to include keywords and notes or abstracts that pertain to your own projects.
In addition to predefined forms, bibliographic database programs have field “types”
that are peculiar to certain kinds of bibliographic data, such as names, titles, keywords
and notes or abstracts. These field types make entering data simpler, and more
consistent with the ways in which we are used to working with these kinds of information.
Names, for instance: author, editor, translators, and other names of contributors,
are entered with first and last names inverted, and the names of individuals separated
with semicolons:
Smith, Jane; Wilson, David B.; Olsen, James D.
This allows bibliographic database programs to convert names entered into the
database into any of the variety of special formats required for names in citations.
APA citations, for instance, require that given names be trucated to initials:
Smith, J., Wilson, D. B., & Olsen, J. D.
while MLA footnote style requires that given names be spelled out and arranged
with the given name first:
Jane Smith, David B. Wilson, and James D. Olsen
The ability to reformat names, titles, pages, and journal names for differing publishing styles
is an essential characteristic of bibliographic database programs.
Most bibliographic database programs assume that you will be using the
information entered into the database in your writing, and are thus
designed with a tight integration to the popular word processing systems.
Usually, these programs install on the Tools menu of your word processor,
along with other writing tools.
Bibliographic database programs let you insert “keys” in your word processing
document that point to a record in your bibliographic database.
For instance, when you select Generate Bibliography, Citation scans your word processing
document for these “links” and inserts properly formatted citations, adding the
appropriate print attributes.
Most bibliographic database programs work in a similar manner.
Database programs allow you to manipulate, search and sort information
in a variety of ways.
In bibliographic database programs, the basic functions of searching, sorting, and
selecting are designed with the assumption
that you are working with an emphasis on text (see the glossary on the following
page for examples of searches, sorts, and selects).
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