The problem

• Separate the download files into their individual references
• Store these references in some kind of orderly way
• Add your own notes and comments, which might be quite extensive
• Retrieve a particular reference some time later, when you may have forgotten most of the details about it
• Generate lists of references and abstracts relevant to particular topics
• Generate bibliographies in publishers' standard formats for papers that you are writing

This document outlines the principles of some of the available solutions. More details about procedures are available in a separate document.

Simple solutions

• You could just keep a list of references in APA (or some other) format in a Word (or other word processor) document.  The sorting facilities available in any modern word processor would enable to you keep them in an orderly way, and the search facilities would enable you to do simple searches on words in title.  Advantage: Very simple and transparent.  Snags:  The document will quite soon get very long; and if you try to keep any other information with the references (e.g. abstracts or your own notes) the strategy will probably break down.
• In Word, and probably in other word processors as well, you can use the "Table of Authorities" procedure to store references as a list of short descriptions - basically the citation form, such as "Smith (1984)".  The full bibliographic detail can be carried along with these short forms like a floating footnote, and if you copy the short form and paste it into something you are writing, the full detail will be carried along in a concealed form, and a bibliography can be constructed automatically.  Advantage: Your reference list will not look so long.  Snags: as in the previous case, difficult to keep ancillary information with the references.
• Word processors normally contain a simple database function, called MailMerge.  This enables you to construct a Master Document (often referred to as a Form Letter or Catalogue), which consists of some basic text plus named blanks.  You can then construct a Data Source, which in the case of Word 97 consists of a table, whose headings correspond to the names you used for the blanks in the master document.  Once you have done that, you can Merge the master document with the data source to produce a word processor document in which the blanks have been filled in with the corresponding data from the data source.  It is easy to use this to generate bibliographies.  Advantage: You can use different master documents to generate bibliographies according to different conventions, so you aren't wedded to APA style; Mailmerge format is very standard so it is likely that you would be able to convert your data to more advanced systems you might use in the future - specifically, it would be easier to convert to using a fully-featured Data base manager, the next option discussed below.  Snags: Understanding how the MailMerge system works will take a little time (though it is a generally useful skil); Entering the data will be a bit slower than with the simpler systems.
• Office suites usually include, along with a word processor and a spreadsheet, a Data Base Manager (DBM).  In the case of Microsoft Office, it is called Access.  You can use Access (or another such system, such as Lotus Approach) to construct a data base of bibliographic information.  As in the Mailmerge approach, the "fields" of the data base would be things like the authors of the paper, the year of publication, etc.  And because modern office suites are quite tightly integrated, you can use the data in an Access file to generate bibliographies etc as Word documents in exactly the same way as you would a Mailmerge data source.  Specifically, to quote from the Help files for Microsoft Access (with additions in italics):
• If you are using Microsoft Word version 7.0/95 or later, you can use the Microsoft Word Mail Merge Wizard to create a mail merge document in Word using a link to Microsoft Access data. Once the link is established, you can open your document in Microsoft Word at any time to print a new batch of form letters or labels, or a new reference list,  using the current data in Microsoft Access.
• For any version of Microsoft Word, you can export Microsoft Access data to a mail merge data source file that can be used with the mail merge feature of Word.
• You can save the output of a datasheet, form, or report as a Rich Text Format (.rtf) file. A Rich Text Format file preserves formatting, such as fonts and styles, and can be opened with Microsoft Word and other Windows word-processing or desktop-publishing programs.
• You can save the output of a datasheet, form, or report as a Rich Text Format (.rtf) file and automatically load the file into Microsoft Word.
Advantages: You can do more with data in a data base manager than you can in a mailmerge data source.  Snags: Although Access is a great improvement on earlier DBM systems, it is still a new (though potentially very useful) skill you will have to learn; Cheaper issues of Office suites may not include the DBM; Running the DBM at the same time as a word processor and other software may overwhelm the memory resources of a smaller/older computer and cause tiresome crashes.

Commercial solutions

• Papyrus, supplied by Research Software Design^TM.   Only available for DOS on the PC, but cheaper than the others, and well recommended.  A Macintosh version is available.
• Endnote, supplied by Niles Software inc. A fully-featured Windows programs, with Macintosh versions also available.
• Research Information Systems supply two different systems, Reference Manager, only available for  PCs (but fully featured for Windows), and ProCite, which is available for both Windows and Macintosh.  It's not clear whether they are currently converging into one system, or diverging, though both seem to offer rather similar facilities.

A local compromise: dbCindex

• Maintain a standard database file of references, and a second file of topic names.
• Navigate easily within each of these lists
• Add any amount of comment about a reference
• Make links both from the references to the topics, and between topics
• Read in reference lists from PsycLit or BIDS output, or from bibliographies typed in APA format
• Generate APA formatted bibliographies for any topic

• Find the folder courses\bibliographics on psycho
• Copy the folder dbCindex (and, therefore, all its contents) from this folder into a suitable place on your hard disk (for example, the c:\temp folder)
• Open the file readme.txt in this folder, and note its contents
• Use Windows Explorer to open the dbCindex fodler you have copied to your hard disk
• Double click on the Setup.exe entry, in order to install dbCindex on your computer.
• When you have installed dbCindex, use Windows Explorer to find the file dbcindex.exe, and drag its icon onto the Windows desktop for future use.
• Before you use dbCindex for the first time, create a new folder  to contain your data base of bibliographic information.

Although dbCindex is supplied free, it remains copyright.  Anyone working in the department is welcome to use it, and to take it with them when they leave.  But you are asked not to copy it to third parties, and you are not allowed to repackage or sell it.

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(access count since 24th November 1998).
Document revised 2nd August 1999

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