EngGuru

Ottobib - Automatic bibliographies for back-to-schoolers (Download Squad)

Sep 30th 2006 2:29AM Oh come on, this is nothing.

First, have you actually tried it? The "bibliography" produced by this thing is horrible -- which makes sense, because who knows what formatting irregularities there are in the databases that the tool is pulling from. If a student handed in the results of this tool thinking "a computer did this, it must be right," they'd be in trouble.

Second, this mechanism is already built into some of the Web-based bibliographic software out there. It is nothing new -- and any software that doesn't already incorporate it can easily do so via a service like ISBNdb.com that has an API.

Third, since when does anyone do research where all their sources are books? This site as a standalone tool is useless. Fun, good proof of concept, but useless by itself.