From Library Master to EndNote

My blogging--not to mention my regular work--suffered from a fit of unproductivity this week brought on by frustration with the bibliography management "productivity" software I was using. Well, that's at least partly true. As this sort of thing happens to me from time to time when I am in the middle of a research project, I should attribute part of the blame to my own procrastination.

Anyway, about five years and thousands of records after starting with Library Master, I have finally made the switch to EndNote. With help from EndNote's technical support, who provided a good initial import filter, I was able to transfer all my data. It only took two days. (The transfer went smoothly once I figured out how everything worked and fine-tuned the filters.)

Technical jargon alert: For the record, Library Master is a powerful, flexible program, but it still doesn't support Unicode (or Greek and Hebrew fonts), and it doesn't interface well with online data sources. Hence, my defection to the industry standard.

Update: One minor problem with EndNote is that the SBL style, which is supposed to automatically format my footnotes as required by the SBL Handbook of Style, is flawed. Hopefully, Michael Pahl, at the stuff of earth, will have finished tinkering with his new and improved version by the time I next need to use it.