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Searching and sorting your library

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Learning objectives

By the end of this module, you will be able to:

  • search an EndNote library; and
  • sort an EndNote library.

Searching an EndNote Library

EndNote provides a sophisticated search function, which allows you to locate specific references or groups of references in your library. We will practise this using the sample library that comes with the software.

If Sample_Library is not open, open it by choosing the Open command from the File menu. The Sample library should be in a list of recent libraries. Choose this library.

Click in the Search tab in the lower half of the Endnote screen. If this tab is not visible, click Show Tab Pane in the bottom right hand of your screen.

Type the word sediment in the first search box. Leave the default options as they are (Figure 13).

searching a library

Figure 13: Searching an EndNote Library

Note that we have not checked the Match Words box. This means that we are searching for the string of letters "sediment-" and not just for sediment as a discrete word.

Click on the Search Whole Library button, and you should see something like Figure 14, with 22 references. Note that these include references containing words like sedimentary, sedimentology, synsedimentary.

edited book reference
Figure 14: Results from Searching an EndNote Library

Let's do a slightly more complicated search. Assume that we wish to find all references by Billoski published after 1990. This means that we wish to find references which have Billoski in the Author field, and a number greater than 1990 in the Year field.

  • Choose the Search tab to display the search dialogue box.
  • In the first row, type Billoski in the Search box.
  • Choose Author from the pull-down menu at the left.
  • Make sure that And is selected as the Boolean operator.
  • Go to the next row and type 1990 as the Search box
  • Choose Year from the pull-down menu at the left.
  • Choose Is greater than from the next pull-down menu. The screen should look like Figure 15.
  • Click on the Search Whole Library button to retrieve the desired references.

a complex endnote search

Figure 15: A complex EndNote search

Note that this search will retrieve all articles written by Billoski after 1990, including any in which he was a second, third or even tenth author.

Note that there is a Quick search box on the EndNote toolbar that you can use if you don’t require a more complex search.

Grouping references

Once you have entered a significant number of references into your library, you may find it helpful to group them by subject. This is a much better option than setting up separate libraries for each topic.

To set up a group, click on Groups on the top menu bar, and select Create Group from the drop-down menu. This will open a box in the Groups Pane on the left-hand side of the library window, where you can type a name for the group.

Creating a new group

Figure 16: Creating a New Group

To add a reference to a group, highlight the reference in the library window. Click on Groups on the top menu bar, click on Add References To from the drop-down menu, and then select the name of the group (Figure 17).

Adding a Reference to a Group

Figure 17: Adding a Reference to a Group

Note that EndNote X3 comes with some automatic groups — All Refences, Imported Refences, Trash.

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More on groups

Groups is an extremely powerful addition to the EndNote tool-set:

  • You can also add references to groups by right-clicking on the reference and selecting the group, or you can drag-and-drop the reference onto the group name in the groups pane.
  • You can have up to 500 groups in your library.
  • You can set up smart groups. These groups have an inbuilt search query. When a new reference is added to your library, it is checked against the search query. If it matches, it is automatically added to the smart group.
  • For more sophisticated grouping, you can organise your groups into group sets.

Consider how you might use the groups feature to increase the efficiency with which you use EndNote.

Sorting an EndNote Library

You can sort your references on any of the fields in the record, such as author, title, year, label.

Choose the Show All References command from the References menu.

Choose the Sort Library command from the Tools menu. The following screen (Figure 18) will appear.

sort options dialogue box

Figure 18: The Sort Options Dialogue Box

In the first box, click on the arrow to select Year.

At the end of the row is a button which indicates whether you wish to sort items from smallest to largest (A to Z) or from largest to smallest (Z-A). Click on this button to change the sort from largest to smallest, ie from most recent year to earliest year.

In the second box, click on the arrow to select Author and leave the default setting to sort from smallest to largest, ie from A to Z. This means that after EndNote has sorted the references by year, it will sort them within each year alphabetically by author.

The box should now look like Figure 19.

specifying the sort options

Figure 19: Specifying the Sort Options

Click on the OK button and the references in the library will now be sorted with the most recent references first.

Quick sort

Another EndNote feature is Quick Sort. To sort your library according to one heading, click on the field headings displayed in library window (eg Author, Year, Title). Clicking again will reverse the order of the sort.

You are now ready to proceed to the next part of the module: Creating bibliographies using EndNote.