Robbins Library Notes

Good morning, readers!

Yesterday, I received a very interesting question — a patron was curious to know two things:

1. Is there a way to directly import information from Philosopher’s Index into EndNote?
2. Does Harvard provide us with a connection filter for the Index as it does for the HOLLIS catalogue?

The answer to the first question is no — though it is actually fairly easy to import records from Philosopher’s Index into EndNote.  All that is required is to perform a few extra steps to make this happen.  (I’ll outline what you need to do, next.) At present, you can only directly import results from Philosopher’s Index into RefWorks.

To the second question, the answer is yes — Harvard does provide a connection filter for the Index, so you will be able to import the references you find in the Index into EndNote without having to do a lot of extra reformatting or data entry.

Here’s how to import references from Philosopher’s Index into EndNote.  I will pretend that I am looking for MW Barnes’ article, “Vulgarity,” to illustrate how to do this.

1. Login to Philosopher’s Index via HOLLIS, using your Harvard ID and PIN.
2. When you get to the Advanced Search page in Philosopher’s Index, enter “barnes” into the first row’s  first search box, and set the drop-down menu to “Author, AU =”; on the next line, enter in “vulgarity”, and set that drop-down menu to “Title, TI =”.  Click the Search button.  You should get the one result, listing the complete bibliographic information: M.W. Barnes, “Vulgarity,” Ethics 91(1), October 1980, 72-83. Check the box next to the reference.
3. Above the results, you should see a link named “Print/Save/E-mail.”  Click on that.
4. This screen should appear:
5. Set the first drop-down box to “Full Format.”  Then move down to the radio buttons next to the “Save” button, and choose the option for whatever operating system you are using.
6. Click on “Save,” and save the files as a text/notepad file to whatever location you chose.
7. Open EndNote, and open an existing library or create a new library.  (Obviously, make sure that you have EndNote installed on your computer first.)
8. Go to the File menu, and choose the “Import” option.  In the box that appears, click on the “Choose File” option and select the text/notepad file.  Then click on the “Import Option” button.  From that list, select “Philosopher’s Index (CSA).” This is the filter that Harvard provides to import references from Philosopher’s Index into EndNote such that you do not need to reformat the data or retype it all in.
9. If you do not see this option, click on the “Other Filters” option, which should be in bold typeface among the options.  Once you do that, you will get a very long alphabetical list of filters.  Scroll down this list until you see “Philosopher’s Index (CSA)” — highlight that, and click “Choose.”  This filter will now be one of your import options.
10. When you return to the Import Box, click on “Import,” at the bottom of the box, which should import the references directly.

I realize that what I’ve just outlined above may seem complicated at first, but, once you have the hang of using EndNote, it’s actually a fairly easy process to import references into the software.

I am very happy to demonstrate these steps in person, so please feel free to contact me to set up a training session.

Also, if you have other questions about using bibliographic management software, please let me know.  I’d be very happy to answer them.