Am I doing online searching correctly?

So far, this seems to be a terrible waste of time. I coming from a Bookends (Mac) background and an online search of the Library of Congress, for example, goes something like this:

Book: John Locke, “An Essay Concerning Human Understanding”

Bookends: Click “Online Search” type in Title and Author, scan list of results, click correct reference, click “import”

Endnote X3: Go to “Online Search” in left pane, type in Title and Author, “confirm” the download of all citations (in this case, 30), wait for download, select reference and add to custom group

Now, two major differences:

  1. Endnote seems to want me to download all the files, which means I’ve already lost ~30s while waiting for the references to DL (Apparently, the Library of Congress is running slow tonight). Multiply that by 20 books, and well…

  2. All 30 references are now "persistent unless I select them all and move them to the trash (vs Bookends which displays them in a separate window that you can keep open, close, whatever)

Performing a second search for a different book added the results to previous list of 30 “John Locke” hits. This seems like it’s just asking to be confusing. I can understand some of the importance of keeping *every* result you ever find, but in the aforementioned “20 books” scenario, trashing all the extraneous references can be tedious.

So, I guess without this devolving into a “Bookends vs Endnote” argument, am I at least doing the search correctly? Or am I perhaps taking the long route and there’s a quicker way to get LoC references in.

You are experiencing the problems associated with the default setting of ENX2 and later, which automatically imports all references (not already in your library, if the preferences are set correctly, which they also aren’t in the default installation) into your library. 

But due to an user uproar, they created additonal modes which are described in this Endnote FAQ

(P.S. Windows users who aren’t “Widows” (see web link above for explanation), can also use the “help” menu to determine which version of Endnote they are running.)

Thanks for the response. That’s VERY helpful. I still have a gripe with the overall philosophy behind this implementation of online searching, but at least now I can get around it more easily. Consider my problem solved. :slight_smile:

Thanks so much for this tip.  I am a newbie in online research.  Can i ask if there are softwares that i can use for research?  That would be helpful.  Pls email me at anggam86@yahoo.com