Reference Maker

Given a table of data, this web page assembles bibliographic references in a standardised format.

The operation of this web page is similar to that of EndNote which I would highly recommend as a plug-in to MS Word. However, it is a bit tedious to do a 'bulk import' to EndNote and, additionally, this web site will check and re-format ISBNs and ISSNs. The disadvantage is that you are stuck with my style of formatting - unlike in EndNote where you can tweak everything to suit whatever arcane sysrem you are a disciple of.

John/Deej, Rob/Mike, Phil,

This may or may not interest you.... but I have written a software tool to handle the formatting of bibliographic references.

When Im writing papers and articles myself, I use EndNote, which is a "plug-in" for Microsoft Word. It is a very powerful tool for managing a database of bibliographic references and for inserting them, properly formatted, into a Word document.

However, not everyone has Endnote, and there are some things (like bulk import of a list) that are a bit "clunky". Recently, I have been presented with Phil's list of references for the Cumbrian Ring book and this prompted me to write this software tool, which I have been meaning to do for a long time.

I processed Phil's list as follows: First I read through it, adding tab characters to separate the fields, then I pasted it into Excel. I was then able to juggle the cells until all the data was in the correct columns. Having the data in columns made it much easier to check the validity and completeness of Phil's references (e.g. when quoting city of publication, for books) than if it were just in an unformatted list. Having edited the data in the columns, I pasted it into my software tool, which produced the correctly-formatted references. (my format is loosely based on the Harvard format, which I use in Endnote).

One 'clever' thing that my tool does is to verify ISBNs and ISSNs and to apply their punctuation correctly. (Although it does not yet deal with the codes for foreign-language books; That is it only processes ISBNs that begin with 0, 1, with or without a 978 or 979 preceding that).

There are limitations in my tool, the main one being that it is written for ME to use, and so, without full documentation, it might not make sense. But if you are interested, go to http://bcra.org.uk/__convert/refmaker.html and take a look.

This software is not guaranteed to work! If you have any problems, please let me know the version of the software - see foot of page.

Requirements

Instructions

There are two ways of using this page. You can "manually" type in the details in the Data Fields section below, or you can paste in a list of entries from an Excel Spreadsheet. To process a list of ISBNs/ISSNs only click here.

Manual Use

Scroll down to Data Fields. Select the type of reference you want (journal, book, book section or report) and type in the details. The reference is assembled at the foot of the page. Some notes...

Batch Use

Copy the text from the Table Headers box below. This contains tab-separated values and so, on pasting it into Excel, it should automatically organise itself into the required column headings for your data. Click here for a list of what the headings mean. Having prepared your Excel table of data, simply paste it into the Data for Processing box and then, at the bottom of the page, click on the Process Line button. Each time you click on that, one line of the data will be processed, and added to the list of references assembled at the bottom of the page.

Hints and Tips

Wildcard replacement

The pseudo-HTML in the references (see heading at foot of page) can be replaced, in Microsoft Word, as follows...

NB: MS Word uses a "corrupted" version of Regular Expression syntax. The regex given above is unlikely to work in a software package that adheres more closely to the standards.

Table Headers

Data for Processing

Data Fields

Reference Type

Data Fields

Item    
  Surname    
  First Names or Initials    
  Is this an editor?      
  Year of publication    
  more authors/eds. format    
  Title    
  Series Title/Report No    
       
       
       
Container  
Not for Journal*, Book, Report *. [* apart from Title]  
  Title    
  Surname    
  First Names or Initials    
  Is this an editor?      
  more authors/eds. format    
   
Volume and Issue  
Not for Book, Book Section  
  Volume/Seq. Number    
  Issue/Part    
  Page Range    
  Publication Date    
Publisher  
Not for Journal  
  Department    
  City    
  Publisher/Institution    
  Edition    
  Page Count    
     
Reference    
  ISBN/ISSN    
  "Available at ": URL    
  "Retrieved on": date    
       

Actions

   

Assembled References...

Show/Hide the pseudo-HTML (what's this?)

Software version: file refmaker.js last modified Thu, 17 Mar 2016 14:40:46 +0000


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This page, http://bcra.org.uk/__convert/refmaker/index.html was last modified on Sun, 06 Jun 2021 11:11:10 +0100