Biblioscape interface can be divided into 6 areas. Two of them are standard among all Windows applications. They are the menu and toolbar at the top, and the status bar at the bottom.
Menu & Toolbar
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Biblioscape menus and toolbars are all customizable. To customize, click the menu command "Tools | Customize...". Go to the "Commands" tab. There, you can drag and drop any command to the menu system or toolbar.
Some menu commands are associated with a shortcut which is listed in the menu display. If the cursor stays on a toolbar button longer, a popup hint will be displayed about the button and its associated shortcut. |
Project
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The project tree is the control center in Biblioscape user interface. All your database contents are organized under the project tree, and you navigate to different modules from here. Biblioscape is designed to handle 6 kinds of information objects: references, notes, tasks, charts, categories, and library. The library module is designed to manage a small research library. It has its own sub-modules and is treated separately from the other kinds of data. For the other 5 kinds of information objects, each is represented by an icon and stored in a tree structure in the project panel.
There are 4 root level containers: Places, Folders, Collections, and Smart Collection. Under Places, you can go to the Recycle Bin in Biblioscape where all deleted records can be restored. You can also go to the Links to see all the link relationships between records. Clicking on the Library will open the library module. Clicking on Internet will let you use an integrated Web browser.
Under "Folders", you can have different kinds of folders for each module. They are: references, notes, tasks, charts, and categories. Folders are the places where records are stored. A record has to be under a folder, and it can only be under one folder. It is like its physical residence.
Under "Collections", you can also have different kinds of collections for each module just like folders, but a collection is only a virtual place for records. A record doesn't have to be in a collection, and it can be in many collections if needed. A collection is a more flexible way to organize your records for different projects. Since it is under the project tree, collections should only be used to manage projects. To classify records, Biblioscape provides a more flexible tool: categories. We will talk about using categories to organize records later.
Under "Smart Collections", you can keep all your saved searches. You can save any reusable search under Smart Collections so you don't have to build the query again and again. |
List
The list panel is at the top of the center panel. It display all the records in the project item you selected in the project tree which could be a folder, a collection, or a smart collection. The records could be references, notes, tasks, charts, and categories depending on which kind of project you select. You can display records in a tree view or a table view. A convenient feature in the list panel is the Quick Add box. For the references module, you can type the author name, publication year, and a few words in the title to add a new reference. Biblioscape will search the Internet for the best match and add the bibliographic data automatically. For the notes module, it can be used for brainstorming.
Preview
The preview panel displays the details of the record you selected in the list panel. There are several tabs in the preview panel. You can display records in a Live Preview where you can edit the record directly. The Read Only tab will show the search words in yellow highlight. For the references module, if the full text is available, you can view the full text in the URL or PDF tab.
Search
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The search panel is on the right. It provides many ways to search records in your database. The result set will be displayed in the list panel. When searching against the current database, the hits will be displayed in the search panel with the search words highlighted in yellow. Besides searching records in the current database, the references module also let you search references on the Internet against Google Scholar and PubMed. The matching references will be directly added into the "Online Search" folder in your database. The "Online Search" also let you search against 2,000 plus university library catalogs, and commercial and public bibliographic databases all over the worlds.
The "Categories" tab is present in the search panel of the references, notes, tasks, and charts modules. You can drag and drop records from these modules into a category item in the search panel. This is a fast way to tag records with a category. Later, when you click on that category, all the records that are tagged with that category will be retrieved in the list panel. Categories can be organized in a tree structure. You can have several categories folders, therefore you can organize references, notes, etc. in many dimensions using categories.
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Status Bar
The status bar lists the number of records that are present in the list panel. When you click on a project item, the full path of that item in the project tree will be listed here.
