Reference Tracker: All Your References in One Place

If you’re a student, you know how important references are. If you’re writing a huge paper, or even a lab report, you will need to not only find sources, but actively use them. Sure, you could (and should also) put them at the bottom of your paper, but that doesn’t help when it’s the day before the paper is due and you left that book at school. Well with Malkinware‘s Reference Tracker, you can not only easily store your references, but include the cited text, too.

The main feature of Reference Tracker (as you would expect) is keeping track of references/sources. To add a new reference to the current document, you just click New Reference, and a drop down will appear with all the choices for the type of reference. Once the reference is added, it will appear in the table view at the top of the window. In the bottom of the window lies the pane where you add information for the reference. The fields will change based on what kind of reference it is, because different references require different fields.

One of my favorite (and most useful) features is the cited text support. In the bottom left corner of the information pane is a large text field labeled Cited Text. This is where you will want to put all of the text that you could possibly use in your paper. The more the better, because you never know when you’re going to forget that book at school! Although this feature may not seem that exciting or new, it is very useful, because then that text is right there along with the reference.

Another very cool and useful feature (if you like notes) is sticky notes support. In a specific reference, you can add a number sticky notes. These can be helpful for paraphrasing the text right in Reference Tracker, or just for taking notes. Either way, it keeps these notes in the same exact document as the references, so you can always find them! My favorite part is the ability to drag them around.

I know I have said that a lot of the features above are very useful, but there is one that is the most useful for putting together your paper — exporting. Once you have completed all your references for your paper, instead of having to rewrite all of them, you can just export them! Just go to File-Export, and choose a location! Right now, the exporting feature does not support Pages documents, but I hear he is working on it. For now, you can just export to an RTF and then copy and paste into Pages.

The feature that goes right along with exporting is importing. Again, this does not support Pages documents yet, but I hear it will. To import, you just go to File-Import. You can either import from a formatted reference list or a BIBText or RIS file. Right now Reference Tracker does not support MLA formatted references, so if you use them, for now, you’re out of luck. Reference Tracker will spit out a list at you that has all the found references, and you can choose to delete certain ones and edit the fields of others. Once you have gone through the list, you just click Accept All & Import, and you’re off!

Reference Tracker, by Malkinware retails for $44.95, but you can pick it up for just $29.95 until September 30th. Compared to other Mac reference trackers, it is pretty cheap, but still has a ways to go feature-wise to be worth $44.95. You should try it out (you can download it from the same site) to see if it fits your needs. If it does, I doubt you will want to go out and buy a $100 reference tracker that has way more features than you need. And remember, this is a 1.0 piece of software; it will only get better!

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