Leap Year

Today I almost threw out the box with the disk with EndNote and its license. It takes up space in my office area, it is for a version that is no longer supported, and it reminds me that I paid a huge amount of money as a freshly minted Ph.D. for software that I truly hated trying to use.

Now I use Zotero much more happily for writing books and articles and for generating bibliographies for students and colleagues. It's not always true that the free, open-source product is the easier alternative, but it is in the case of this wonderful bibliographical organization software from the Center for History and New Media, which supports many different formats, media types, and works with Amazon, WorldCat, Google Books, and most library catalogs.

Apparently I was a sucker not to chuck it out, since I received this message from the company that produces EndNote the very same day:

Please read this alert about an import issue with EndNote versions X through 8 beginning in 2010.

In many cases, bibliographic records with a publication date of 2010 or later will not import the year data into EndNote. When this occurs, the year must be added manually—see FAQ for more details. All other data for the reference imports correctly.

We know this importing issue is an important one to you, and apologize for the inconvenience. As our records indicate you are using a version that is no longer supported, we would like to extend a special upgrade offer to EndNote X3 of $59.95 (expires 12/31/2009).

I write about new media! I cite new books! This little glitch about books produced in the rapidly approaching coming year would make the software laughably unhelpful to me. I read the FAQ that they recommended, and then attempted to view the link to the video, which showed this black load screen for a hilariously long time and then refused to play beyond the first frame.

I will definitely go back and throw out that EndNote now.