Logos vs. Accordance, Part 3: Bibliographic Citations
Friday, November 13, 2009 at 1:06AM This is the third in a series of video comparisons between Libronix/Logos and Accordance Bible Software. This particular comparison focuses on both programs' ability to produce bibliographic citations in word processing documents. Logos has had this ability for a while, and Accordance added it a couple of days ago with the release of v. 8.4.
Due to the time length constraints of YouTube, I had to split the video in the middle; however, as an alternative you can see a high definition version on my personal gallery in its entirety.
Segment A:
Segment B:
Points of Clarification:
- In the first example which looks at commentary citations, I'm not suggesting that it's incorrect for Logos or Accordance to provide information that designates the source as an electronic one. Actually, it's very correct, but I find it very interesting that the two programs do this quite differently. And in part of my "corrections," I am merely demonstrating how one might remove this information if turning a paper into someone who might be biased against electronic sources. Believe me, these folks still exist!
- In one example, I paste a sentence from the TDNT in Logos 4/Windows into Word 2008/Mac. I comment that the transliterated word érōs was capitalized in the process to Érōs. I have confirmed that this does not occur when pasting from Logos 4/Windows to Word 2007/Windows. Therefore, Mac users pasting in a native word processor will want to watch for these kinds of alterations. Once Logos 4/Mac is more fully developed, I assume this won't be an issue.
Previous installments:
Libronix/Mac vs. Accordance, Part 1: "Speed" Search
Libronix/Mac vs. Accordance, Part 1.1: Speed Search Revisited
Libronix/Mac vs. Accordance, Part 2: Printing
Accordance, Logos in Faith & Reason, Technology
Reader Comments (18)
Many thanks. Very helpful.
Rick,
Thanks for another comparison video, helpful and informative.
A few comments regarding your examples:
As you hinted, the first line indent for footnotes is based upon the current style for the document. If you have it set to that prior to pasting the information, it should preserve it. This is not something we control at all.
In the first citation example from WBC, you indicated that our citation needed to be changed, but it was identical to your version - except for the edition information, which is necessary. In the rare case that a professor doesn't want to see this, you can easily delete it.
In the last example with TDNT, this is something that we will be addressing in a future rev., but as it is the only thing missing from our citation is the author - the rest is exactly to spec. for Turabian. The publication date is not required for a reference work in a footnote.
Misc comments:
It would have been helpful to see how the comparison looked for those examples in the SBL style, or as a bibliography. I guess you have to stop somewhere though. ;)
In Logos 4, what if you don't want citation information copied, or a footnote inserted? Is there a preference to disable this, or is it included every time you copy/paste?
Of course it would have been nice to see how this works in a Mac-to-Mac comparison, I'm sorry that the pre-Alpha of Logos 4 isn't allowing you to copy anything.
I copied the same sentence from TDNT and pasted it into MS Word but both occurrences of érōs came out correctly as lowercase.
Rick B:
In the first citation example from WBC, you indicated that our citation needed to be changed, but it was identical to your version – except for the edition information, which is necessary. In the rare case that a professor doesn’t want to see this, you can easily delete it.
Yes, you're right, of course. My concern over that made me go back and add the note of clarification in the post. My "correction" is not really one at all in this instance except to demonstrate how it would look simply cited as a book. One real correction, however, is that the period needs to be removed after Commentary.
In the last example with TDNT, this is something that we will be addressing in a future rev., but as it is the only thing missing from our citation is the author – the rest is exactly to spec. for Turabian. The publication date is not required for a reference work in a footnote.
This is certainly a point for ongoing discussion. Accordance's formatting is correct if this is to be treated as a Turabian 17.5.3 Reference Work. I really do not think it is. And I would still probably mark it if it came to me like this on a paper I was grading. The same is true for the Anchor Bible Dictionary. I've reference a handful of ABD articles and treat them bibliographically as a component part of a book or volume, citing them by author and title first. I can guarantee you that the SBTS stylist would send it back to me if I tried to cite an Anchor article by the 17.5.3 method.
And technically, I got it wrong in the video, too, because I left out the editors. The footnote should read
E. Stauffer, “ἀγαπάω, ἀγάπη, ἀγαπητός,” in Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, eds. Gerhard Kittel, Gerhard Friedrich and Geoffrey William Bromiley (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1995), 10.
It would have been helpful to see how the comparison looked for those examples in the SBL style, or as a bibliography. I guess you have to stop somewhere though.
Well, first, the video was already 14 minutes long. My original goal had been to keep it under ten minutes so that it would fit in one piece on YouTube. No such luck in spite of the fact that I tried to keep the pace forward-moving. Second, I have no experience with SBL formatting, only Turabian, so I am not a good judge of SBL formatting. I'll leave that to someone else.
In Logos 4, what if you don’t want citation information copied, or a footnote inserted? Is there a preference to disable this, or is it included every time you copy/paste?
You can turn off the settings in Logos. Go to Tools: Program Settings and click "No" under "Copy Citation."
Nick,
You are very correct. I just verified this pasting the same sentence from Logos 4 into Word 2007.
My original goal in this whole series was to compare Mac software versions, which wasn't possible for this part due to the Mac version of Logos 4 in alpha stage and v. 1 never quite hitting "ready for prime time" status.
Nevertheless, this could still be a significant issue for Mac users of Logos who are using the Windows version in emulation until the Mac version is usable. They'll need to watch for the switching to capitals when pasting from the Windows version to a Mac word processor. Nevertheless, I've added another clarification note in the original post above.
Hi Rick,
Regarding the treatment of TDNT, I agree with you that it should be treated differently (which is what I meant above), and plan to do so in a future rev. I disagree that based on the current formatting (based on Turabian 17.5.3) that the publisher and date is required (that is if you consider their example of Encyclopaedia Britannica).
I understand about the length of the video and such. For SBL you could consult their style guide as the basis (despite your experience in using it), but that would probably take a lot more of a time investment than you are willing to make. :)
As you showed in the video, our option to "Copy As Citation…" doesn't require a change in pref settings each time you want to alternate between a regular copy. Note that you can also use the shortcut: ⌃⌘C.
Thanks again! :)
Yes, Rick B., you are correct that a citation based upon Turabian 17.5.3 does not have to include publication data. I meant to correct that earlier.
As always, these videos are very helpful! Well done.
I use SBL format, but I have to disagree with you about citing a dictionary like an article— it is a reference work. Lexicons, dictionaries, theological dictionaries, and encylopedias are all reference works. In general, these are not giving "fresh" analysis on a topic like an article, essay, or book is doing.
Does Turabian not still suggest abbreviations (i.e. TDNT)?
One more thing— I disagree with you that someone who uses Bookends or Sente won't find this useful. In fact, with some slight modifications from the user the programs work great together. And I've indicated to Rick how this connection can be further improved.
In a nutshell, once I do a paste from Accordance into Mellel (Word too), I wrap the footnote in curly brackets, and use the "@" sign to indicate the page number instead of the comma-space. Then at your leisure you convert text to citations in Mellel. If/when Accordance allows users to wrap the footnote in curly brackets and use the "@" sign for page citation, it will be that much easier.
This issue is always whether it's signed. If it's a signed article, it has to be treated as a component part of a work. If it's an article in the World Book encyclopedia, it can be treated simply as a reference book.
I suppose one could debate the little Kittle over the 10 volume set. Articles in the ten volume set definitely have to be cited by author. In my experience, the little Kittel does too, though because article titles still contain the author's name.
Standard abbreviations like TDNT are allowed. Of course, it's always dependent upon who is receiving it.
Danny, don't take my statement about usefulness as an absolute statement. Nor should it minimize the importance of this kind of function in Accordance.
No I didn't take it as an absolute statement, but it should be stated that this new feature can flow rather nicely with bibliographic software.
I don't at all disagree with including the author in citing a theological lexicon, but I don't think it should be exactly the same as a journal article. As was said, Accordance will address this issue.
Well, as I've state elsewhere, the video was already going long. My goal was certainly not to cover every aspect. I think Accordance's performance over Logos is extremely commendable since the Accordance feature is only a few days old and already outperforms Logos which has had the feature for a few years. I think/hope that I made that clear.
I had not thought of the functionality you describe above converting the footnotes to a citation manager. That's very interesting and I would imagine some folks would want to do this. I still don't know if I might not simply prefer to enter mine manually, but I like the option.
There's also more to be said now that Joe Weaks has create a script for the citations from Accordance to work with Pages. I've considered creating a follow up video. Of course, time is always my enemy.
Where I personally would use Accordance's citation function is with personal documents such as sermons or prepared lectures, when I was using it just for my notes, not meant for distribution. I have hundreds of sermons and Bible studies that I taught in the nineties that I never bothered to cite my sources because I was not thinking ahead. I could now never use these publicly because I didn't cite my sources properly. I started do this even in my personal notes in recent years, but the Accordance feature would definitely be a help in this regard.
As for the issue with reference books, the Turabian format of a component part of a larger work (I don't have it in front of me to give the actual number) is not the same as a journal article. There's separate formatting for that. I don't think that's what you meant, though.
More overt examples of what we are discussing are from the AYBD. I regularly see these treated as component parts of a larger work. And I believe that's correct. Or take D. A. Carson's article on NT Theology in the IVP Dictionary of the Later NT and It's Development. This has become a standard article and I've always seen it cited by his name and the title of the article first. I've never seen it cited as Turabian 17.5.3.
17.5.3 is perfectly fine for HALOT and BDAG and similar sources. The issue again comes back to signed articles in a reference work. If an author's name is attached to it, it has to be treated differently.
For those of you following this discussion, you may be interested in the new podcast by Dr. J. on the new features in v. 8.4 of Accordance, including the citation feature. Look for podcast #13.
http://www.accordancebible.com/site/resources/multimedia/podcast/?category_id=3318835
Rick,
I agree that there seems to be limitations in both. I only use Endnote so that I am guaranteed to get the most accurate information, formatted properly and formatted to work properly with multiple citations (ie, ibid).
As a side note, what software are you using to do your recording?
Joe, I used to use a program called iShowU, but Snow Leopard built video screen capture into Quicktime X, so I've been using that lately. It works very well other than I can't figure out anyway to let me just record one portion of the screen.
Cool, I had not noticed that since my upgrade to Snow Leopard.
FYI< I am not getting the email notifications of replies.