Annotating, bibliography, and citation

Picking up some loose ends, especially responding to some recent posts by Danny Zacharias at Deinde.

Annotating: In this post, Zacharias recommends using A.nnotate as an online collaboration tool. I checked it out. Looks good, but the free version does limit you to the number of docs and editors. Services like this are competing with GoogleDocs and the new Adobe Acrobat online and such. Τhe primary virtues of A.nnotate compared to the rest are that it can import PDF files (something even the Adobe site can't do!) and that it can handle Greek/Hebrew Unicode. I have used co-ment, and it too can deal with Greek/Hebrew, and I also like that it can be set to provide a feed for changed texts. A.nnotate can also make notes on web pages, but it basically is taking a snapshot of the page and then leaving notes. For web page annotation, I've used diigo. It's pretty quick and versatile. For more web annotation tools check HERE and HERE. Check HERE for info on using Google Reader for web page annotation.

Bibliography Tools: On this post, Zacharias recommends Biblioscape as an alternative bibliography and research manager for those who don't have NotaBene with it powerful Ibidem and Orbis programs. Biblioscape does look good, includes a number of nice extra features, works well with MSWord, etc.... but it costs $200. I think Zotero is accomplishing all I need for free.

Citation: On this post, Zacharias laments the lack of professional disregard for electronic texts, and the outdated and insufficient way we have for citing such texts. Yes! It's a post worth reading, and I support his suggestions for new footnoting and bibliography formats, especially for electronic editions. The question of appropriately citing texts regularly arises on the BibleWorks forum. Logos has its built-in footnote system which works great when copy/pasting text, but it still needs some additional tweaking to locate specific points in the electronic text. Zacharias is correct here, I think, in arguing that citation systems simply need to allow someone to find the referenced text and that there should be consistency in how texts are referenced.