Archiva: Clipboard Watcher

Archiva's clipboard watcher monitors text copied to the Windows clipboard. Text is copied to the Windows clipboard when you, in any Windows program, select text and click File, Copy or press Ctrl+C. If the copied text contains bibliographic records in a format which Archiva recognizes, the clipboard watcher will notice that bibliographic data has been copied, and it will convert the data to Ibidem format, and add the record(s) to a temporary database of "captured" records. The clipboard watcher is available if you have installed Archiva Premium or Archiva Platinum. Click Tools, Archiva, About Archiva to see which version is installed.

The clipboard watcher will be active when you start Nota Bene and it will continue to be active after you exit Nota Bene until you log off your computer. This is the default setting, but you can change this setting so that the clipboard watcher is active only when Nota Bene is running, or whenever your computer is on. See Configure Archiva.

Whenever the clipboard watcher is active, the Archiva icon will appear in the system tray. See Archiva Icon.

You can manually activate or deactivate the clipboard watcher at any time. See Disable/Enable Archiva.

The clipboard watcher not only captures the data that you copy, it also supports "smart" capture of data -- data capture that is automatically supplemented with information from the Library of Congress.

Many sites do not provide all the information required for proper scholarly citations. In some cases, information may be wrong or misleading. For example, an editor or translator might be listed as author. Even for the Library of Congress, not all views show all the data. The short list shown after a regular Library of Congress search does not include all of the data needed for scholarly citations.

Archiva handles these cases by automatically supplementing and/or correcting the data from the fuller data available in the Library of Congress. For example, if you do a search for a book at Amazon, and copy the page that contains bibliographic data for a book, Archiva will automatically retrieve data on that book from the Library of Congress, convert to Ibidem format, and save the record in your temporary Archiva database. Archiva uses ISBN numbers to capture additional data from the Library of Congress. See ISBN Numbers.

Archiva indicates where it got the data in the "On-Line Library" field. This field normally contains the source (library plus view--for example, Short Results, Full, etc.) of a retrieved record. Those records that have been supplemented/corrected by Library of Congress data will indicate that by the addition of "+ Library of Congress Z39.50." The date will also be added. For example, the following information in the On-Line Library field would indicate that the information had been retrieved on April 2, 2007 from the basic view of Amazon, and supplemented by a Z39.50 search of the Library of Congress.

Amazon Basic + Library of Congress Z39.50; 4/2/2007").

The records generated by Archiva should, of course, be examined carefully. Not all records found on other sites are found in the Library of Congress. If that is the case, the data captured may not contain all the information needed for correct citing. In most cases, this will be obvious from looking at the captured record.

This affects capture of multiple records (such as from a short-form list), where the capture results may vary record by record, depending on whether a particular record is in the Library of Congress holdings—some of the records may have full and proper citation data, while others may be less adequate. In all cases, the data should be examined, and it can be edited if necessary.