Ibidem Overview

Ibidem is a bibliographic database system tightly integrated with the Nota Bene word processor. With Ibidem, you can develop your own personal bibliographic database and use it throughout your career to keep bibliographic information readily available. You will have many options for sorting and searching through the sources you have used in your research. Ibidem will also automate the process of inserting citations in your papers and generating reference lists or bibliographies. In-text citations (footnotes, endnotes, short form or reference numbers) and reference lists or bibliographies are displayed on screen as you are writing your paper and they can be formatted in the publishing style you select, with changes made easily at any time.

Bibliographic databases are predefined structured databases. Structured databases require that information entered into a database be stored in "fields," each of which holds a specific type of information. Traditional databases require that the user define the fields for the database.

Bibliographic databases are set up with predefined fields, such as author names, years of publication, publisher, titles, and so on. You enter the information for each book, article or other work in the fields that are provided. Once the information has been entered, Ibidem can find the record you need and insert properly formatted citations in your documents. A properly formatted reference list of the works cited in your paper will be generated automatically. You also have flexible options for generating bibliographies that include all of the records in your database, or any group of records that you select.

Right now, you are probably accustomed to typing bibliographic information as citations, in a "sentence-like" form, using punctuation stipulated by your style guide, as in this example:

Berlin, G. & Sum, A. 1988. Toward a More Perfect Union: Basic Skills, Poor Families, and our Economic Future. New York: Ford Foundation.

If you cite the same work in another paper at another time, you type the same information again. If you have to reformat the citation in a different style, you might have to go back through your notes to find the author's full name. Even if all the information required is in the current citation, you probably need to retype the citation with different punctuation, perhaps in footnotes or in a different sequence. This is precisely the sort of work Ibidem will do for you.

With Ibidem, bibliographic information needs to be entered (and proofread) only once. For each resource work, you will have a different record with the information entered in the appropriate fields. Your database is the collection of all the records that you have entered. This database is used not only to keep track of information, but also to generate citations and bibliographies.

Ibidem makes it easy to enter bibliographic information. Information for each record is entered in fields (author, title, publisher, etc.) Different fields are needed for different kinds of works, and data entry templates provide you with the correct fields. The data entry template for a book includes those fields necessary for citing a book, just as the data entry template for an article in a journal includes fields prompting you to enter the bibliographic information you will need for a proper citation of a journal article.

Fields are also available for information that will not appear in your citations. Use the keywords field to identify works on a particular subject, and then you will be able to generate a reading list on that subject. The abstract field can be used for your brief comments about the work. Use the record link field to link to a Nota Bene document with more extensive reading notes.

Ibidem will use the data you enter and the rules of the publishing style that you select to generate your citations and bibliographies. Needless to say, entering the data accurately is important. There are a few guidelines to follow. Author's names are entered with last name first and multiple authors are separated with a semi-colon. For example, if "Smith, Sophie; Jones, Stanley" is entered in the author field, the program will be able to format citations and bibliographies in accord with the various publishing styles (some styles invert first and last names while others do not, and styles vary in the way multiple authors are listed). However, if "Sophie Smith and Stanley Jones" is entered, the program will not be able to apply the correct formatting and would not be able to properly alphabetize under the name "Smith". You will learn more about the guidelines for entering data in the tutorial that follows, and information about how to enter data in each field is easily available as you work.

Generating formatted citations with Ibidem is easy. Before we take a quick look at how you will use Ibidem to cite works in your papers, we should perhaps review the basic terms Ibidem uses to differentiate between types of citations and citation lists.

In-text Citations: These are citations that appear in the body of a paper. They can be in the form of author-date or short form cites (Smith, 1980), numbered cites (1), footnotes, or endnotes.

Reference List: A reference list is a compilation of citations for the works cited in a particular paper.

Bibliography: A bibliography is any compilation of citations. It might include works consulted for a paper or a grant proposal, or works to be included on a reading list, or works dealing with a particular topic. The principal difference between a reference list and a bibliography, for Ibidem, is that bibliographies do not need to be directly tied to the works cited in a document. Bibliographies are generated directly from the database; reference lists are generated when Ibidem scans a document for cites.

Before citing your first work in a document, you will be prompted to select a database to associate with the document, and an academic or publishing style for your citations and your reference list. Then entering citations is easy! Just place your cursor where you want the citation to appear, open your Ibidem database, find the record you want to cite, enter the page number, and click the Cite Work button. The citation will be entered in the citation in the style you have selected for the document and your reference list will be generated automatically.

IbidPlus is an extension of Ibidem that allows you to use all of the controls of Ibidem for non-bibliographic databases. Databases can be used to keep track of collections, household inventories, student records, or any information that can be entered in fields that you define. Set up your database in Ibidem as a customized database rather than a bibliographic database, or use pre-defined options for addresses or field notes. When a non-bibliographic database is active, menu items like "Generate, Bibliography" will automatically be changed to "Generate, Report." Ibidem's flexible options for searching and sorting and generating various lists and reports will all be available.

A little bit of time invested in learning to use Ibidem now should bring new organization and efficiency to your work, and save you hours and hours of time in the long run. The following are all available on the Nota Bene Help menu, and where indicated, they are also available on our web site.

Printable Tutorial: printable PDF tutorial will take you through a series of exercises showing the basics of creating your own Ibidem database, entering data, and citing works in your papers. Once you've finished the tutorial, you will be ready to use Ibidem for your own projects. Click Help, Ibidem Tutorial (PDF Format) or go to https://www.notabene.com/tutorials.html

Ibidem Sample File: A Nota Bene file provides an example of a document that contains citations and a bibliography that have been generated by Ibidem. It presents a series of exercises that demonstrate how to use Ibidem to maintain your bibliographic database and cite works in a document. To access this file, click Help, Sample Instructional Files and double-click on Ibidem (Citations).

Video Tutorials: A series of short videos on Ibidem (and on other aspects of the program) is available by clicking Help, Instructional Videos or by going to https://www.notabene.com/videos.html

Nota Bene Help: This Ibidem section of Nota Bene Help goes on to provide detailed instructions on using Ibidem. Nota Bene Help is available as either on-screen Help or a printable manual. Both are available from the Nota Bene Help menu.