Help needed using Mellel and Bookends for my research paper

[polemarch]

Hi all,

I have just bought the license for these two products after being suitably impressed with the speed and simplicity of the software for large projects. I am currently organizing my sources and am at the start of my PhD in the Byzantine military. Up until downloading Mellel I have always created references etc manually so this is all very new to me.

My question is what is the procedure, stage-by-stage in creating and using references with these two tools? For example, I want to reference a dozen separate pages or chapters but how do I do this? Do I create a seperate reference for each set of pages in Bookends or is there another way to do it?

Bookends never seems to keep its link with Mellel, I have to keep re-selecting it before copying references.

In short, a simple guide to using references with both of these products would be very much appreciated.


kind regards

[Taman]

Hi there,

I think you'll be happy with your new tools. I'll try to answer this quickly and somewhat briefly!

I would only put one entry for each paper in book ends, then when you reference it in Mellel (via inserting, ie. control-Y) you double click on the inserted reference and add the page numbers via entering "@123". This will then be converted to your proper format when you scan the document.

For books that collect a number of papers, I would put one bookends entry for each paper/chapter. For normal books, I would just put one entry as per the paper illustration in the previous paragraph.

Re losing your link to Mellel, have you specified the word processor your using in the Bookends options?

The user guide for Mellel has a section on entering references which is pretty good.

Best, Taman

[polemarch]

Thanks for that. I will test it out when I get home and away from this Windows box! I have selected the correct WP in Bookends. As soon as I go back to Mellel it loses the link. V odd.

[Taman]

Have you selected bookends as the bibliographic software in the Mellel options?

[polemarch]

Thanks for that, so far I've got them communicating based on your suggestions. I do have another questions though if you don't mind.

How to integrate footnotes in the overall scheme of a research paper using the two products. Do I just paste in as per normal using 'command y'? If so how do I stop the brackets being used.

[Taman]

Not quite sure what you mean. You can insert footnotes by selecting insert-note-footnote in the insert menu. This will put a footnote in. If you're talking about having your references come up as footnotes on each page, I'm not actually sure as always put mine at the end of the document.

Re brackets, are you talking about "(" eg. "(Smith, 1993, p. 13)"? There are lots of different ways to format your references. You select the one you want when you do a scan of the document which converts the temporary citations to the format you select. You can modify the style in biblio-formats manager.

Best, Taman

[polemarch]

Essentially I want the reference to be in brackets in the body text (Jones, 1984) etc but then if I have reference in a footnote I would not want the brackets in that section.

How do you all tend to reference your papers using these tools?

Thanks.

[Taman]

Just insert the citation like normal in the footnote. Then double click on the inserted citation. This will open the 'edit citation' dialogue. Click on the 'don't enclose formatted citation' and when you scan the doc, the citation will be there without brackets.

Best, Taman

[polemarch]

Great, got that and it is working fine. I have, yet another question though! Sorry. How do I format a citation for a non-modern work, such as the bible or an ancient text?

For example, I am trying to cite:

Anna Comnena, Alexiad, Book XI, Ch. VI-VII

This book is found in Bookends on the Amazon catalogue but I do not know how to format it so that I get a usable reference in the text. I've tried adding the book and chapter info using @Book XI, Ch. VI-VII at the end of the ref and it messes up. I've also tried creating a Bookends reference with Book XI in the title and then adding @Ch. VI-VII but it still will not work.

Is there a normal way of working for referencing classical texts whilst using bookends and keeping to harvard referencing.

[Taman]

As you're not using page numbers, I'd add it as a comment, so like:

\ Alexiad, Book XI, Ch. VI-VII\

Cheers, Taman

[polemarch]

That works perfectly, thanks.