Genie, Any word on this?

I look forward to having this option in the near future. I think this will save staff time while processing reserves and also expedite the process for those faculty who enter material themselves.

thumbs way up on export! we get this question a few times a year by faculty wanting to revise syllabi

Batch uploads for faculty would be nice; however, I do not dismiss the idea of individual uploads to the Ares Client item form. Although it is easy enough to create new item records from a citation, if this process can be automated using this new import tool, time spent copying fields into that new item record would be all but removed. Multiply that time saved by 500-800 completely new item records and you have a day or two saved.

I also really like the idea of importing a .ris or .bib file and letting Ares fill in all the item record fields. It is unclear in the comments whether ‘import citations’ means a file import or a block of text.

Agreed that bulk import is the power of this feature. One way to get around the EndNote vs. Refworks issue is to have both systems export RIS. this has the added benefit of instructors being able to dump citations out of their discovery service e-shelf systems...just sayin....

Q#1: I think this enhancement would be primarily for the do-it yourself instructors. For those who ask us to their data entry, I can't imagine them doing an export from the citation management system; some of them are still dropping off print copies of their syllabi at the circ desk.

Q#2: primarily import a pile of items. I think batching is where the primary benefit of this enhancement lies. It's easy enough to fill out a form for one item; where you really want this option is when you have a list of 10+ articles, all of which you happen to have citations for in Zotero.

We have a few more questions. Do you all think that your instructors will do the import themselves or expect/want reserves staff to do this for them after they email their citations in?

Also, would instructors/staff expect to be able to import a pile of items all at once versus one by one? Because for each item, you'd need to specify a few things for it.

What about the reverse? I've had two students in the last week ask to EXPORT citations from Ares to RefWorks.

I agree that this would save everyone time and energy!

+1 Refworks

Our library uses Zotero and EndNote, with a pretty strong emphasis on Zotero since it's free.

Endnote here

We still subscribe to EndNote, but most of our liasion librarians recommend Zotero to library users.

We use Refworks.

There are several votes for this item. Which of the citation management systems do you all use? Each one of them will require unique dev work to manage.

Thanks for this info! We can look into this but would love feedback from others as well on how helpful this would be.

- Genie

Looking at the problem of importing multiple items it is apparent that the shared list function provides the best environment to import multiple items at once. Limiting a mass item import to specific file types generated by Reference Management Software tools will allow relatively easy mapping between Ares fields and those fields found in the RMS schema.

Essentially an upload button would bring up the find file window. Once the file is found, Ares would work though the file line by line importing each line into an appropriate Ares field until the end of the citation. At the end of the citation if the line reader is not at the end of the file, a new item record is started and the process continues until the end of the file.

Review of these imported items would still be a manual process by staff members but in the Shared List Management window this is accomplished relatively easily.

Thanks for Your Consideration!

It seems like importing citations from these citation management tools could be done using an addon. Has anyone tried?

One library commented that this would make things much easier for the instructors so that they do not have to fill in individual request forms.