In this installment of the series of articles previewing Sente for iPad, I would like to discuss the support for installing multiple libraries on any iPad.
As most will already know, Sente on the desktop lets you create any number of libraries and access any of them at any time. This can be any combination of synchronized or non-synchronized libraries. There are a number of reasons why you might want to maintain more than one library:
- You might have several, non-overlapping areas of interest. If it is rare that individual references are common to two areas of interest, and rare that references from more than one area would be cited in a single manuscript, then they may be best managed in separate libraries.
- You have a very large reference collection, but rarely consult many of the papers. In this case you might create a subset library to hold just your most consulted references. All of your papers are close at hand, but by limiting the size of your main library, Sente will perform better on a day-to-day basis.
- You want to share a subset of your papers with others. Professors and others often want to make a reading list or other small collection of papers available for others to consult. You can do this by creating a new, synchronized library that includes only the papers you want to share. Your larger, complete library would remain your main collection, and when you want to add something to your shared library, you can just drag them from one to the other.
- You are collaborating with others and sharing a single library for a specific project. You still want to maintain your own personal library, but you want to be able to add to and modify the shared collection.
These are just a few reasons why you might want to work with more than one library.
On desktop Sente, new libraries can be created using the File > New Library command, or by simply placing a library you received from someone else on your computer and opening it.
Sente for iPad also supports multiple libraries. These can be created directly on the iPad or installed using iTunes.
Only one library can be open at a time on the iPad, but switching between libraries is quick: just tap on the Libraries entry in the source list and select the desired library from the list that will appear. When you quit and restart Sente, the last opened library will be reopened automatically.
The screen shot below shows the contents of the Libraries list, with three libraries. This is also where new libraries can be created.
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