How do you input song lyrics into endnotes? What reference type would you use?
Endnote has so many styles it seems there could be one that accommodates song lyrics. But instead of wasting time looking for something which may or may not exist, why not just create your own reference type?
Endnote provides 48 reference types of which three are “Unused”. You could take one of the “Unused” reference types and customize it by setting up your own fields (e.g., artist, song title, year, album, etc.). Furthermore, each reference type contains seven customizable fields so you could change one to “Lyric” - and this will be the place to store the song’s lyrics.
If you want to be able to reference the song in some fashion, you’ll need to develop a corresponding output style.
One trick is to enter your information in a existing ref type – Like Film maybe, and see what fits where and gets formatted how (usually that uses the generic template in an output style, since there isn’t a corresponding template in most styles for other than the basics).
What other fields do you need and which ones would be a part of a “reference” - add those to your list. Remember that the “Author” is going to be the main sorting/listing so probably Artist/Band? You might want a another Author field to actually list Band members. Publisher could be Record Label, Abstract could contain lyrics.
Once you have figured all this out, so that a generic output (try “annotated” for everything and APA for a “reference-like” output) works well-- (Remember that you can view the output at the bottom of the library window with the preview tab.) – then go and create your new preferences>Ref Type with the more intuitive titles/names for the fields. You can then create the corresponding template in your output styles, by copying the generic to the new template (insert ref type) and tweak it to include any additional fields, or ordering that you might want.
Again, as you save the new style (to a new name) remember to check the preview on the test record, after changing the ref type there to your newly created ref type.
Tips and Tricks-- if you don’t want to see that long list of unused reference types, editing (preferences, modify ref types) to place a period in front of their name, will hide them from your day to day drop down list.