Citation management feature

[duytrung]

Good day!

Calibre has an excellent document management function. I want to request a feature that allow citation integration with microsoft word. or libreoffice. I used Endnote but in its function to manage document, it does not support many format like Calibre.

Is this proposal reasonable?

Thanks

[DaltonST]

Originally Posted by duytrung

I want to request a feature that allow citation integration with microsoft word. or libreoffice. I used Endnote but in its function to manage document, it does not support many format like Calibre.

You might want to look at Zotero at https://www.zotero.org/

Calibre has a plug-in that imports Zotero "documents" along with their Zotero-specific metadata that is mostly irrelevant to normal ebooks. Calibre's "Add Book" function does not work properly at all for Zotero "documents", hence the plug-in. Obviously, you must first be a Zotero user to use that Calibre plug-in.

By the way, your post does not belong under "Calibre > Development". See https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sh...d.php?t=122042 .

DaltonST

[theducks]

Moderator Notice
Moved out of development. Requests are done at the Bug Rporting site. Please read stickies at the top of each forum before posting. Tnx

[Fiat_Lux]

Originally Posted by DaltonST

You might want to look at Zotero

Zotero is for organizing content that it can index. As best as I can determine, Calibre libraries are not indexable by Zotero.

So how does using Zotero help the OP, who wants to be able to cite content from their Calibre Library, when using MSO, LibO, or AOo?

[Krazykiwi]

Zotero doesn't index much, it primarily looks up identifiers - usually doi's, but also ISBN's, and then fetches metadata, pretty much like Calibre does. For journal articles and books it does an excellent job, but for content without such an identifier, such as a web page, it'll attempt to parse metadata but often gets it wrong or in the wrong fields - it's often faster to just fill in the fields manually.

I'm not sure what that has to do with Calibre either, but Zotero will happily store content internally (inside a Mozilla profile, a bit black boxed, although you can get it out), externally (in a directory structure of your choice), or as references to existing locations - such as in Calibre, as url's. It does cope admirably with a much wider range of documents and document types than Endnote though.

The biggest problem I can see is that the majority of metadata sources available to Calibre, even via plugins, do not support the information required for the majority of formal citation standards, at least not without a ton of custom columns and manual entry. Off the top of my head things like publisher location, edition, chapter authors, journal issues don't fit neatly into Calibre's columns - and why would they, they're not that interesting outside of when you have to cite them.

So if you're going to do a ton of manual entry anyway, you may as well be doing it in a tool specifically for the intended purpose. (And if you don't like Zotero, try Mendeley or Citavi, all of which are better for multiple formats than Endnote imo.)

[Fiat_Lux]

Originally Posted by Krazykiwi

do not support the information required for the majority of formal citation standards, at least not without a ton of custom columns and manual entry.

I ended up adding around 25 columns, of which most were PCIP related. I've been tempted to add columns for DCIM, but I'm not entranced with the amount of manual entry doing so would entail.

If my programming skills were better, I'd write an extension that automatically adds PCIP data to Calibre.

if you don't like Zotero, try Mendeley or Citavi, all of which are better for multiple formats than Endnote imo.)

I'm not entranced with entering data once in Calibre, and then again in a Bibliography Reference Manager.

[Krazykiwi]

Originally Posted by Fiat_Lux

I ended up adding around 25 columns, of which most were PCIP related. I've been tempted to add columns for DCIM, but I'm not entranced with the amount of manual entry doing so would entail.

I'm not entranced with entering data once in Calibre, and then again in a Bibliography Reference Manager.

Me either, and I wasn't suggesting you should. That is why I keep documents for citation elsewhere, and books in Calibre. Actual book metadata is easily automated in either so all I actually enter is an ISBN, and I rarely reference actual books - perhaps a discipline difference - so that tiny amount of duplication doesn't bother me. And the problem isn't just getting the data in, it's getting it back out in a useful format - keeping citations in Calibre would mean yet more manual entry formatting the ref's in whatever document I'm writing.

Calibre is very good at what it does and it does a great many things, but I'm not sure it should be bent to doing everything. Sometimes the answer to "Calibre can't do what I want" really is "Then use something that already does".