Evaluation of Scholar's Aid

Introduction

Scholar's Aid 2000 is a program package that includes a bibliographical data manager called Library and a notes/ information manager (data held in hierarchical structure) called Notes. The two programs are tightly integrated using OLE technology. This survey concentrates on the Library module

References

• Doyoung Na, 3680 Bellville North Rd, Mansfield, OH 44904, USA
• email: dna@scholarsaid.com
• URL: www.scholarsaid.com

Hardware requirements and interface

• Price for 5 or more copies $47, quick payment $91

Database Structure

• URL field only in electronic reference type (which will launch browser if icon pressed, not field!)
• Reference types are subdivided- eg books are split up into single volume, chapter, multi-volume, all others. The reference type could for example be entered as Book+chapter+work by another for example

Limitations and Indexing

Retrieval of references and reference sets

• very limited field search facilities, boolean was limited to word search, thus one could search for cat and dog in all fields or one specified field, but not do a boolean search across several specified fields. Help was limited here since it said it was possible to do a boolean search but not how
• only author term list to aid search
• central database- so modifying source in file A updates same source in file B automatically
• the keyword had to be added to the keyword tree before being added to the reference for it to be used in searches

Addition, Deletion and modification of references

• theoretically, the definition of an import format should have been straightforward (except that the names of the fields were not obvious, eg #N1 for Author, #T1 for journal name. The problem was, having created the template, one could not then find it to use it unless it had been specified completely. Only one of my BIDS test items went in successfully, and one was asked what kind of references they were, so clearly one could not import a mixed file. There was not enough detail about the special characters,and  writing formats and it may be that only one record was entered because the next reference did not start with the TI tag but with Record since BIDS has effectively two parts for each reference. It did not make any difference whether I included the Record line in the format or not. The reference that was imported did not update the author list
• the file preferences had to be changed to be able to use the clipboard (when citing, the preference had to be set to use Word)
• logic could be used for specifying alternative formats
• when one added a keyword, when one clicked the keyword icon, the references for each keyword were shown (provided it had been added to the keyword tree beforehand).

Formatting and output of retrieved references

• it was not clear how to change the font of individual styles- one could not highlight the individual field to change it (one had to use toggles \b for bold, \i for italics, \u for underline, \c<blue255\red255\green255> to (change font colour to white!) etc
• journal formats can not be specified in long and abbreviated form.
• logic could be used for specifying alternative formats
• the style editor was confusingly not for creating output formats but for how the records were displayed when citing. Styles were provided for Chicago and APA whereas output templates were provided for bibliography, bibliography and abstract, reference list, reference list and abstract, title and description, author and title and were used for file export. It was surprising that Chicago and APA were not also provided as output templates. The clipboard did not work all the time so it was difficult to make a copy of a template to create a new one.The documentation did not describe the difference between templates and styles and should have given far more examples and description since templates and styles are the hardest and most used facility of any reference manager.

Documentation and Help facilities

Summary

• cheap with good facilities
• could click on a hiearchical menu to see only references from books, and below that chapters from books for example
• backup facility
• autocompletion of words in glossary
• Notes gave an extra facility to store more information in a hierarchical way
• 60 day free trial of full version
• versatile template writer
• spellchecker
• many reference types subdivided
• two-byte characters (eg Korean, Chines, Japanese) supported

• no direct link to web so that although one could launch the browser by pressing an icon if one had a URL, one could not load web databases directly into the database, unlike Endnote and Biblioscape
• no z39.50 protocol unlike Endnote
• template and style language did not make use of font icons so was complex
• could not write a template to import BIDs references
• unintuitive field codes
• small supplier
• manuals and help system not always detailed enough
• limited search facilities but better than Endnote
• clipboard not always usable
• only term list for authors and keywords, not journals and not sure whether author list updated automatically- keyword list had to be updated manually
• no journal abbreviations and formats
• very few template formats provided
• no debugging facilities for import- but then only Papyrus provides some
• does not run on Mac unlike Papyrus, Endnote, Procite and Reference manager

Conclusion