Why Are We Using Endnote? *

LMS/8/23/04

Why Are We Using EndNote?[*]

EndNote is a very powerful software for managing information. EndNote helps you to organize information for your research projects, such as Discovery, and for your end-of-unit and end-of-year portfolios. In addition, once you understand how to create and search your EndNote library, you can use it to organize your research and writing for every single class you take at George Mason.

EndNote offers both immediate and longer-term support to your academic work. As soon as you begin to build your EndNote library from the readings you encounter in NCLC110 and information sources you uncover during your research projects, you can start to use the Cite-While-Your-Write feature of EndNote. This feature:

· inserts correctly formatted in-text citations

· build a complete list of Works Cited or References in alphabetical order at the end of your paper/essay/daily writing/etc.

as you write. When you need to submit an Annotated Bibliography (for the Discovery project, for example), you can use EndNote to create automatically a bibliography containing your sources and annotations.

In the longer-term, when you use EndNote to build a library of your own reading, research and writing, you create a database of all your intellectual work. You can easily search this database, using Keywords, which you choose yourself. But you can also search your database by author's name, title of text, category of text (article, book chapter, film, etc.) and date of publication. This flexible software allows you to discover your own personal style of organizing information for speedy, simple access.

This level of organization will help you to review your work when you are preparing your end-of-unit, end-of-year and final graduation portfolios. You will be able to review all your readings and writings in one place, and recover easily the reflections you wrote on them. If, for example, you used the competencies as some of your Keywords, you would be able to search your database for everything that related to Critical Thinking, or to Global Perspective.

Most importantly, EndNote is not just "technology" which you will use in the first-year in New Century College. It will help you to organize all your reading, research and writing for all of your classes here at George Mason University. By creating libraries of your own work, you will quickly access vital information for classes and assignments and deepen your understanding of your own learning.

Starting EndNote

You will learn how to use EndNote in workshops in NCLC110 and NCLC 120. As soon as you learn how to use EndNote, you will also need to download a copy onto your personal computer, so that you can add to your EndNote library whenever you are working for class. This download is free to George Mason students. First, install the software.

1) Installation

a) Download EndNote here: http://cas.gmu.edu/tac/endnote/endnote.html
Follow the instructions on the web page to complete installation. You may also buy a copy of EndNote (very cheaply) at the George Mason computer store.

2) Creating a New Library and Customizing EndNote[*]

To build a personalized EndNote Library, you first need to create a new library and customize it to suit the requirements of your classes.

a) Open EndNote

b) Choose Create a New EndNote Library and Click OK. Choose a memorable name for your library and save it to your disk. Click OK. The window below should appear:

c) When you create a new library, you will first need to customize the output styles (the way EndNote will format your in-text citations and bibliographies) to include the styles required in your classes. The most common styles for first-year learning communities are MLA and APA 5th. To add these styles, click Edit on the top menu line

d) Click Output Styles

e) Click Open Style Manager

f) Check and highlight APA 5th and MLA and close the window

g) At the right-hand side of the line below the Edit Menu, you should see a dialogue box.
Click the downward arrow to check that APA and MLA now appear in the list, as they do below:

e) Use this dialogue box to set the style of the in-text citation and bibliographical reference you need for each project

3) Building Your Personal Library

a) Click on References (next to Edit) and click New (Shortcut = CRTL+N). The New Reference window should appear:

b) In the middle of the window you should see the Reference Type dialogue box:

If you expand the menu, as we did above, you will see a list of all the different types of material your library is ready to store. Choose the appropriate type of reference for the material you want to enter. In this example, we'll enter the summer reading book, Ever is a Long Time.

c) We thus choose Book as the reference type. EndNote opens a record which contains spaces for all the information required to create an in-text citation and a bibliography item:

(Use your writer's handbook to check which fields of the record you must complete to write a correct in-text citation or bibliography for different types of reading and research materials.)

d) When you have completed your record, close the New Reference window. You should now see the following window:

On the top left, you should see the name you have chosen for your library. The bottom left shows the number of references in your library. And you can click the Show Preview button on the bottom right-hand side to see what your EndNote library entry will look like in a bibliography. You can then check again that you have entered all the necessary information correctly.

4) Using Cite-While-You-Write[*]

Cite-While-You-Write allows you to enter in-text citations (in your chosen format) into a paper and automatically create a bibliography or list of works cited.

a) Open your EndNote library (you must have EndNote open while you are writing your paper). Choose a citation style (APA, MLA, etc.)

c) Open (or begin writing!) the paper where you want to include citations and a bibliography or list of works cited.

d) Highlight in your EndNote library the reference(s) you want to include in your first citation. Use the Shift or Control key to highlight more than one reference.

e) Position the cursor where you want the citation(s) to appear in your paper

f) Choose “Insert Selected Citation(s)” from your word processor’s Tools menu. (Click Tools then EndNote 7 then Insert Selected Citation(s)). You'll need to wait a moment before the citation appears. When it does, look at the end of your paper, and you'll see that EndNote has also inserted a bibliography entry for the source(s) you chose.

g) Continue the same process throughout your paper. EndNote will automatically alphabetize your bibliography. To complete your bibliography, choose Format Bibliography from the Tools menu of your word processor (Click Tools then EndNote 7 then Format Bibliography). Use your word processor's formatting menus to make sure your bibliography appears in the same font and font size as the rest of your paper.

5) Using EndNote: Making Your Library Work for You

Most of the information (such as author, year of publication, place of publication, publisher, etc.) you include in the entry form for each item in your library will be familiar to you from citations you have written in high school. Two sections (or fields) of the entry form need further explanation, as you will use them to tailor your EndNote library to your particular needs. They are the Abstract and Keyword fields.

I: Abstract Field

You are already familiar with the purpose and form of an abstract from your daily writings. In EndNote, you print the Abstract field when you create an Annotated Bibliography (see p. 13). Thus you should include a brief evaluation of each source after you have summarized its content.

If you are creating a library entry for an assignment you have written yourself, use the Abstract field to contain your own reflection on the process of completing the assignment. If you do this for all your assignments, you will record your reflections on your learning as you learn. When you are compiling your portfolios, you will be able to use these reflections to plan your reflective essays and choose the best examples of your work.

II: Keyword Field

As the word "key" in their name suggests, Keywords form the critical spine of your EndNote library. They offer one of the most intuitive and comprehensive ways to search the EndNote library of reading, research and writing you have compiled. The next section explains how to choose Keywords, and how they are used.

Keywording: An Introduction

A Keyword is a word or short phrase you include in the Keywords field in EndNote to help you search through your research library. You may use any Keyword you have chosen to search through your references. Always keep a separate, ongoing list of the Keywords you use. It will help you to stay aware of the words you have already used. And it will ensure that you use the most appropriate Keywords for each item in your EndNote library.

1) How to Choose Your Own Keywords

Everyone will choose and organize keywords differently. All you need to keep in mind is that your keywords should help you to organize and search your library efficiently. You should include with each reference you enter both identifying and descriptive keywords.

a) Identifying Keywords

i) Identifying Keywords identify the main sections or groupings of research material in your EndNote library. For example, one of Professor Smith's main reading and research areas is for Unit III in NCC. Therefore, whenever she encounters an article, a web site, a book, a movie or an artwork she thinks might be suitable for either students or faculty in Unit III, the first keyword she enters is Unit III. One of your main groupings might be Discovery.

ii) Prof. Smith also organizes her research for Unit III by the themes through which the team organizes the course: history, global perspective, ideology, imperialism, identity, imagined communities and interdependence. Thus, for each source she always enters a keyword to identify the theme or themes for which the source might be most applicable. Let's say that the source she is looking at is most applicable to the classes on ideology.

iii) Next, she might add a keyword which identifies the type of source she has found, such as movie or art exhibition.

iv) Finally, she often finds sources when she does not have time to read or see them. Thus, she always marks sources as either Read or Unread.

v) Thus, she might develop the following list of identifying keywords for a particular source which looks like:

Unit III
Ideology
Movie
Read

Using only the Identifying keywords, she can already search her EndNote library for material that relates to Unit III, or frame a more specific search that looks for material she has Read for Unit III which relates to the theme Ideology

b) Descriptive Keywords

i) Descriptive keywords help you to keep track of the precise content of each source. Say, for example, Prof. Smith has, as one of her sources for Unit III, a movie called Earth. The movie recounts the 1947 partition of the former British colony of India into India and Pakistan, after Britain granted the colony its independence.

ii) The most obvious descriptive keyword for her is India, as that tells her the geographical location of the movie. She would also add Pakistan, as the movie also discusses the origins of Pakistan.

iii) The wider theme of the movie is the splitting of the two countries when the British left, a process called by participants and historians Partition. This would also be a useful keyword, as it gives her the period in history the movie covers.

iv) The general process whereby the European powers surrendered their colonial empires is called decolonization. She may have or find other sources which deal with decolonization in other parts of the world, so Decolonization might be a useful keyword, too, as it locates this particular source within a world-wide historical movement.

v) Finally, she might want to classify the type of movie, such as love story, political drama, rite-of-passage drama, adventure story, etc. This movie is definitely a Political Drama, so she adds that as a keyword.

vi) Now her keywords look like this:

Unit III
Ideology
Movie
Read
India
Pakistan
Partition
Decolonization
Political Drama

As she enters all her other sources in a similar way, she can, for example, search for material that relates to Unit III and Decolonization that she has Read. Or she can look for a Movie that deals with Decolonization. And so on…..

How to Search Your EndNote Library

1) Open your EndNote library

2) Click on References in the main menu, and click Search References

3) The window below should appear:

4) You may search using any field in your library, such as author or keyword. You may combine terms (such as author and keyword, or keyword and keyword), for example, to search for specific items. Use the "And," "Or" and "Not" buttons to frame your search.

5) For example, say you knew you had watched a movie on India in class, but you couldn't remember the title, or what you thought about it, when you came to compile your portfolio. You could search your library by choosing India as a Keyword on the first line, checking the And button, and choosing Movie as your Keyword on the second line.