EndNote 21 has a nice new feature where tags can be added to any reference. There are some peculiarities with tags, though, which is why I consider them a beta feature. I’ll mention here what I’d like to see changed, but even though tags are in their early stages, there are some legitimate use cases for them.[1]And of course, reasons for EndNote users to update to versions 22, 23, etc…
First: the bad news about tags
- Tags are limited to the desktop version as of right now, although they do sync nicely between different computers.
- Tags don’t show up in the web interface (either the old or the new interface).
- Tags don’t show up in the iPad version of EndNote
- There really should be a tool tip or some indication when hovering over a tag that identifies which tag has been added, especially when a reference has more than one tag.
- There should be more than the seven colors available for a tag.
So why use tags at all?
In my workflow, they serve a couple of useful purposes:
First, they help me determine what I need to still do to truly make my EndNote library awesome. I don’t know why I didn’t include abstracts when I first created my EndNote library, but I’ve since decided that would be a good thing to do. Sadly, when I get articles from my patron membership to Southern States Communication Association (SSCA), I can’t get the abstracts with the references because of the way Taylor & Francis has set up the journal access. If I download the references into EndNote using my SSCA access, I only get the reference details, not the abstract — I have to add the abstract later.[2] Why that’s the case is beyond me, and is a bit too technical for this post. There are currently 1,655 articles tagged “abstract added.” I still have around 3,000 articles to go at the time I’m writing this post.
So I have three tags related to abstracts: “abstract added,” “abstract needed,” and “no abstract available.” Those should be pretty self-explanatory.
I also have a tag called “Book Review/Review Essay.” While there’s been a decline in the readership of book reviews, I’d argue there’s still a case for the essay that reviews several books in a particular area. And there’s a definite audience for reviews of literature in certain areas as well. In both cases, it’s a way to start “getting up to speed” in a certain area of a discipline. Those are articles worth reading.
There’s a tag called “priority read.” These are articles I want to get to quicker than others.
Then I have tags for the classes I teach[3]EndNote devs: This is why I want more colors!! There’s a tag for Communication Theory, a tag for Theory and Research, and a tag for Critical Analysis of the Media. Then each of those tags have additional tags for the particular area I’m teaching… for example, “Literature Review” is a tag that has articles that talk about how to better write literature reviews. There’s even a tag for potential student projects in Theory and Research.
There’s a tag called “writing projects.” Those are articles that I may want for my current research projects or for future projects.
There’s a tag called “teaching wiki,” which are for articles that I intend to share with my department about better teaching.
I also have a tag for articles I’ve used in classes.
The second reason for using tags: EndNote allows you to see what other tags an article will have, unlike groups, where you can’t see what other groups an entry is in.[4]It sounds very Gmail like — and it is.
In all, I have 42 tags (EndNote allows for 5000).
Why use groups when tags exist?
For me, tags are for short or medium-term projects. Groups are long term storage. The biggest workflow issue is trying to have groups that make sense and that have multiple articles in each group without having so many groups that I can’t remember where articles exist. A group with 1 article isn’t really a group.
EndNote uses the terminology Group Set and Group: a group set is simply a collection of groups. So in my case, I have a group set called Presidential Rhetoric. And, as you might suspect, most of the groups inside Presidential Rhetoric are for a particular president, with a few miscellaneous groups such as “presidential speechwriting” and “presidential rhetoric (general).” The presidential group set does violate my rule of trying to have more than 1 article per group — our field hasn’t written a whole lot about William McKinley, although historians have. But that also tells me that I have research to do later!