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Via Crooked Timber, news of a ghastly powerplay by the makers of Endnote, the dreadful lowest-common-denominator bibliographic management application. They’re trying to sue Zotero, an open-source bibliography manager plugin for Firefox, out of existence.
I join Henry in urging academics and librarians everywhere to cease using Endnote and replace it with open tools that don’t lock their research in proprietary, secret formats.
Your Comments
Matthew Smith writes:
Are Endnote and Blackboard somehow related? I seem to remember some kind of similar trouble with Blackboard a few years back. I realise these companies need to turn a profit but I would have thought they would also have some love for the domain in which they operate which could be expressed by competing fairly with the other players. Poor show Endnote, shame on you.
Posted: 1 10 2008 - 14:21 | Permanent link to this comment
Nick Caldwell writes:
Blackboard had a big nasty patent that they were waving around to drive out their competitors, but I believe that patent was recently invalidated in the face of some 20 years worth of prior art.
Posted: 1 10 2008 - 14:43 | Permanent link to this comment
Wendy writes:
I never took to Endnote…and after a time just gave up on it as i found it totally unwieldy and timewasting…and I survived!
Posted: 1 10 2008 - 15:08 | Permanent link to this comment
Catriona writes:
I’ve never used Endnote, either. I do all my bibliographies by hand, both the standard list of works cited and the scholarly bibliographies/indexes to content.
I’m happier that way.
But I’m also seeing what seems to be a higher number of instances of students who are unfamiliar with the basic features of bibliographical entries, and who can’t interpret them readily. I don’t know if that’s down to electronic tools like Endnote, but it certainly does make life at university a little more difficult for them.
Posted: 1 10 2008 - 16:58 | Permanent link to this comment
barry writes:
hmm, you’ve inspired me to try out zotero again. thankee.
Posted: 2 10 2008 - 20:40 | Permanent link to this comment