Submitted by bluszczokrzew on 2019/04/08 19:49
Hello everybody,
I'm new to IQ and to the forum. I've played with the app a little, but I am still a newbie. 
I want to turn IQ into a bibliographical manager. Has anyone tried it already? I have some ideas how the database should look like, but I've encountered some problems.
 
1. I guess, that the basic items should be: books, articles, authors. What to do if the book has two or more authors? 
2. I want to have a possibility to order the authors alphabetically. Should I have separate fields for a name and a surname, follow the convention, that field "name" is written in form: "Doe, John", or is it possible to order items by the last word in the field (Joe Doe).
3. Has anyone tried to import something from Goodreads or Mendeley? I know someone has tried Zotero. 
 

Comments

Been there, done that, one of my grids is a list of scientific papers and articles.
 
  1. You could make the 'Authors' field a Text field and set the 'Editor' to be an 'Auto-list of values' but make sure 'Multi-Select' is checked, then you would be able to select more than one author and have different combinations of authors for different papers.
  2. They are already arranged alphabetically and this has never been a problem for me but it must be said that if you want them sorted by surname then you must adopt the convention of 'surname, first names'.
  3. I don't know.
 

bluszczokrzew

2019/04/09 18:24

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 Thank you.
Mind if I ask you another question?
 
I have created such grid: 
 
 
Is it possible to copy the row and then paste it into a text editor (e.g. MS Word) as a formatted text? E.g.
 
1. Doe, John; Making Things Work; Penguin Books: 1989, New York. 
 
I've tried all copy options and got only rubbish. 
 
 

Pierre_Admin

2019/04/09 19:03

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Hi,
 
Select the whole item row (item > select item) and do Edit > Copy. Choose "Select grid rows and columns"
 
In Tools > Options > Grid (1.2.27), you can choose to copy the grid header or not
 
Each value is separated with a Tab character. It isn't formatted as you'd like, but the content is there
 
Another option is to create a field that would combine all the fields and format it like you want. If that option interest you, just ask !
 
Pierre_Admin
IQ Designer
 

bluszczokrzew

2019/04/12 10:11

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 Thank you very much. That's what I'm needing. I'm slowly progressing :)
Unfortuntately, I've just recently learned, that Mendeley (owned by Elsevier), my bibliographic manager, started encrypting users databases (previously in sqlite format), making them unaccessible from other apps. They've made it secretly, without previous annoucement or change in Terms of Use. I'm really pissed off. 
 
Here's another question. Let's say, for every "book" item, I want to note down what other texts it is citing (its bibliography) and what other texts are citing it. It would be nice to have it in a form of what links out, and what links in. What is the best way to implement it? 

Pierre_Admin

2019/04/12 11:36

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[quote=bluszczokrzew]
Unfortuntately, I've just recently learned, that Mendeley (owned by Elsevier), my bibliographic manager, started encrypting users databases (previously in sqlite format), making them unaccessible from other apps. They've made it secretly, without previous annoucement or change in Terms of Use. I'm really pissed off. 
 
Here's another question. Let's say, for every "book" item, I want to note down what other texts it is citing (its bibliography) and what other texts are citing it. It would be nice to have it in a form of what links out, and what links in. What is the best way to implement it? 
[/quote]
That is particularly bad, as their in the scientifc-related business and science is all about sharing information... Time to switch to Zotero I guess
 
On the second part of your post, I would add a sub-item called Bibliography. This item would have as sub-items, all cited documents.
 
Pierre_Admin
IQ Designer