Last year I wrote a hint about using Google to search Anthrosource. I’ve found using Google often yields faster and better results if I’m looking for a specific article. However, I find it frustrating that half of the Google results link to the citation page, while the other half link directly to the PDF (all the links say they link to the PDF, but that simply isn’t the case).
Because I want my metadata, I prefer links to the citation page. So, in order to ensure that all the Google results consistently link to the citation page, I’ve whipped up a Greasemonkey script using the greasemonkey-for-dummies tool Platypus.
Geeky stuff, to be sure, but perhaps it will be useful for some of you. If you are running Greasemonkey, you can install the script here. It should be easy enough to change it to make all the links go to the PDF file instead, if you prefer it that way. My hope is that my meager efforts will inspire someone to write a much better script which gives you multiple links for each of the search results: to the citation, the PDF, and the bibtex file …
u rawk!
the fact that iTunes can import and keep track of not only music and video but also PDFs is promising. I wasn’t aware of this until now. The task now would just be to write a Cocoa plugin for iTunes that alters the way iTunes handles those documents so the Artist/Album paradigm is something more like Author/Journal/etc. Then there is the metadata, as you said. But the simple fact that iTunes can import PDFs into its framework is a start.
Actually using iTunes for PDFs is a hack. It makes much more sense to use something like Bookends or Sente – both of which are designed to handle this kind of metadata, and also work as reference managers. I recommend Bookends, since my previous experiences with Sente’s handling of in-text citations left much to be desired; however both applications are quite good. Endnote somewhat less so as it does not have an iTunes-like interface.
I’ve used Endnote and Bookends a bit, but they seem to suffer from the problem that many such programs do, and that’s that they are a bit obtuse and overly complicated. Bookends less so, but I still can’t get it to open a PDF that is attatched to a list item with a double click. It just comes up with the reference info, which I have no need to edit since that is all imported when I put it in the library in the first place. Its management of attatchments leaves a bit to be desired too, since it doesn’t delete attatchements from the folder that you had it automatically put them in when you un-attach/delete it from the library item.
Bookends’ ability to function as a server is interesting, and I havn’t tried it out yet, but the problem with that is that when you use a server you usually have a client that talks to the server. You could do similar yet more limited things with a paired-down iTunes-like manager using a Bonjour connection (just like iTunes does) and share PDFs between people on your network (i.e. everyone in your department, provided they are using the program) with no server necessary.
Anyway, back to my original point. All i need is a program that gives me a library of the articles/web pages/documents I have on my hard drive, organizes those articles, and allows me to open them from that interface. Much like iTunes does for my music. Bookends’ ability to make citations and bibliography pages with certain formates is wonderful, but the simple act of organizing and accessing the articles is clunky to me.
Have you tried giving feedback? The Bookends developer is very responsive. He\’s implemented almost every feature I\’ve ever requested from him, and he\’s busy making some major improvements – including switching to Cocoa so that he can have a universal binary build, and implementing OpenURL …
that’s a good idea. I’m going to dig around with it a bit more. hopefully some of my frustrations are merely caused by me not using it right.