How you import references from a bibliographic database depends on the database itself, the browser you use, and your operating system settings. So let's say I want to import some references I found in PubMed. I can select the references I want. Click "Send to". Choose "Citation Manager". Click "Create File". And now I have a file called "citations.nbib" in my "Downloads" folder. So what happens next depends on your browser and operating system settings. I am using Chrome on Mac OS X, which does not automatically open up the file for me, but it does show the downloaded file's name here at the lower left corner. By default, my computer is set to open a .nbib file with EndNote, so if I click on the file name to open it, it will automatically be imported into EndNote. Now if your computer does not know how to handle the .nbib file, or any exported file from other databases for that matter, you'll need to link the file type to the EndNote program in your operating system. On Mac OS X, you can navigate to such a file in the Finder. In my case, the file I just downloaded. Right click on it. Choose "Get Info", and under "Open With", you can choose "EndNote X7". Click on "Change All" button to make that the default program for this type of file. In Windows 7, you can navigate to the file in Windows Explorer. Right click on it. Choose "Open With". Pick "EndNote". And then check "Always use this app to open". And then click "OK". No matter which operating system you use, you should only need to do this once for any file type. Not all browsers will display the downloaded file name in the lower left corner, but usually there is a visual cue indicating where it goes. For example, in Safari, the animation told me it went to the "Downloads" folder on my Dock, so all I have to do is to open up that, and click on the newly downloaded file. Some browsers make it even easier by automatically launching the downloaded file. For example in Firefox, you are greeted with this dialog box the first time you downloaded a new type of file. You can then pick "EndNote" from the "Open with" dropdown, and check "do this automatically". And from this point on, Firefox will automatically launch EndNote to import any .nbib file, so that'll save you an additional click. If you don't want to mess with your system, or if you are dealing with a locked down system, you can always manually import the downloaded file. So in EndNote, I can go to "File", "Import", and then navigate to the downloaded file. Under "Import Options", I need to choose an "import filter". Typically it is the name of the database where I downloaded the file, which in my case is "PubMed". PubMed is not in my short list yet, as this is a brand new installation, so I'll choose "other filters". And search for PubMed in the list. Highlight. Click "Choose". Click "Import". And there they are. This may seem like a lot of steps, but a lot of them you only have to do once. For example, once you pick PubMed from your filter list, it will remain in your short list, and you don't have to do it again the next time. So these are the general steps for importing references from a database. You pick references from the database. Look for an "export" function on the database page. Export the selected references to EndNote. At this point, you typically download a file. Then depending on your browser and OS settings, the file may be automatically imported, or you may import it with a click, manually import it from within EndNote. Now let's demonstrate the process with other popular databases. This is Scopus. Again I will pick the references I want. Click "Export". Choose "RIS format", as you can see that it is for EndNote and Reference Manager. In my case, I will choose to import citation information as well as the abstracts, 'cause I want to be able to read the abstracts in EndNote. Click "Export". I now have a file called "scopus.ris". I click on it. And here they are. This is Ovid MEDLINE. Again, I'll pick the references. Click "Export". Choose "EndNote", "Complete Reference". And click on "Export Citations". Now I have an "ovidweb.cgi" file. Click on it. And here they are. Now in your case, your system may not know how to handle the "ovidweb.cgi" file, if this is the first time you do it. In that case, you will need to link the file type to EndNote, as I showed you previously. This is the Web of Science. Again I pick the references I want. Pull down this menu here. And choose "Save to EndNote Desktop". I will pick "Full Record". Click "Send". I've got a "savedrecs.ciw" file. Click on it, and here they are. Again in your case, your system may not know how to handle a .ciw file. In that case, you are going to need to connect the file type to EndNote. You are going to have to do this once for each file type, so I would recommend setting this up for all your favorite databases to make things a little easier later on. This is CINAHL, the nursing literature database on the EBSCOhost platform. This is a little different. You have to first put the references you want into a temporary bucket called your "folder". So click on these "folders plus" icons. Now my "Folder" has these items. Then I can go to "Folder View". Select all of them. Click "Export". Choose "Direct Export in RIS". Click "Save". Now I have a "delivery.ris" file. Click on it. There you go. If you use Google Scholar, it is a little more complicated, because Google does not allow you to select multiple references at once. You've got to do that one by one. Click "Cite". Click "EndNote". Then I have a "scholar.enw" file. Click on it. And there it is. Then I can come back and import another one. Up to this point, our demos were about importing references of journal articles. You can also import book references into EndNote using catalogs that support exporting to EndNote. I am going to demonstrate that with Yale's Quicksearch and the WordCat database. Yale's Quicksearch is at search.library.yale.edu. Here are some search results. Again I am going to pick the references I want by checking these boxes. And then under "Selected items", choose "Export to EndNote". I now have a file downloaded. Click on it. And there they are. Again your system may not know how to handle this file. In that case, you will have to link this file type with the EndNote program. Another commonly used tool for this purpose is WorldCat, which is the union catalog of a great number of libraries in the world. So again, here are my search results. It seems like I can only export one by one from here. So click on a record. Click "Cite/Export". Click "Export to EndNote / Reference Manager". I now have a .ris file. Click on it. And there it is. A common problem in terms of book references is that sometimes you only want to cite a chapter of the book instead of the entire book. There is no good way that I know of that allows you to easily import book chapters into EndNote automatically. So most of the times you'll have to manually convert a book reference into a book chapter reference. Here is how to do it. So here I have a reference for a book. I'll double click to open it up in its own window. So make this a book chapter reference, I will first change the reference type from "book" to "book section". And then I need to move the content in the "author" field to the "editor" field. Just cut and paste. Also I'll move the content in the "title" field to the "book title" field. Now I need to manually enter the author names for the chapter. And the title of the chapter. Like that. Now these are the most obvious fields to change, but if you have other relevant fields that need to be changed, such as page numbers, etc., then you should change those too. Save it. That's it! One thing you'll find very useful is to add additional information to all the imported references immediately after the import, so that it is easier for you to identify them later on. Maybe you want to add a custom label to this particular collection of references. Maybe you will be deduping reference from different databases, and it would help a lot if you know which records came from which databases. EndNote makes it really easy to do that. Right after an import, the imported references will be temporarily put in the "Imported References" group. I can go to "Tools", "Change/Move/Copy Fields". Under "Change Fields", select a field. In this case, I will simply choose "Name of Database". I want to "replace whole field with" "PubMed". Click "OK". You will get a warning about content being replaced. Now if I open up any of these records, you can see that I now have "PubMed" under "Name of Database". Now I can display our new field "Name of Database" as a column here. Remember we can go to EndNote Preferences and change the display field options. So I'm going to change column 2 to "Name of Database". I'll change the heading to simply "Database" to save some space. Click "Save". Now you can see that the names of databases for all these records are now easily scannable in the reference list.