Is it possible to have a library that can be shared through multiple users. Sort of a common library for one company where anyone who has a licsnce can share( add/ change) the library and use it in their own way. If is possible already how would I go about making that work. ?
Thank you
Yes and No. Only one user can have a single library open for editing at a time. Other users are locked out when it is open for editing. We get around this by have a copy in a read-only folder, which is updated nightly and automatically by a script written by our IT guys. Most of the time, we use the read-only version, apart from when we want to update or add a reference. Then we open the read-write version (and sometimes have to send out a distress call by email to get someone else to close it first!).
Other users have compressed the library and put it in a dropbox folder, but at this time, as far as I know, you can’t use a library.enl and its associated .DATA folder in dropbox, unless a dropbox glitch has been solved.
The other alternative, is to use Endnote Web to share libraries. See this thread for more on that.
I have just gotten off the phone and finished reading an email from EndNote tech support about the issue of sharing endnote libraries. The company answer is you can’t. EndNoteweb is useable, but generally a joke (I use it to sync with my iPad). Thompson Reuters has a disclaimer that specifically says EndNote will not work properly with any cloud service, specifically they name Dropbox (it has to do with the way in which DropBox syncs information and endnote needs access to that info).
I am in an institution with a site license for EndNote and the research done here requires a lot of sharing. The number of people now using Dropbox to share their EndNote libraries is astounding. There is no real Multi-user solution (since endnoteweb doesn’t sync smartgroups, group sets, groups of groups, or groups with the same name there is a real problem - technical support pointed me to a EndNote plugin, for x6.01, that will import and export smartgroups) and there needs to be. I have users who still use reference manager for this very reason - and pay the license fee. I used to use reference manager network version, why can’t there be a network version of EndNote?
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