The readership for Chorus reviews of bibliographical software is largely made up of faculty and academic software support professionals. Such readers are looking for a combination of two things: 1) Your holistic value judgement; and 2) exposition of points of detail that only an expert such as yourself will spot on first acquaintance with such software. This means that many more mundane details such as the maximum size of fields or the raw sorting speed may be left for the comparison grid. If, however, you notice gross speed deficits or unwieldly restrictions on the size of records, etc., then these merit examination.

There is nothing wrong with a short review. The current review of Citation for Windows is probably too long. When in doubt, be succinct and leave matters of detail for the comparison grid.

Because of your expertise, it may be that you've invented some techniques for getting more out of a given package--these may be special word processor macros, clever procedures for converting from one database to another, special styles or fixes for styles, workarounds for installation problems., etc. If you like consider writing a separate "tips" section.

Very generally the crucial tasks for such users are the following, in rough order of importance:

1. Ease of use when writing a paper or chapter; ease of use when formatting a final paper with a bibliography and/or notes. It is a relatively trivial matter to churn out a bibliography; more subtle capabilities include the ability to format a note in a long form for a first citation in a note, with a shorter form for all subsequent notes. Many users expect to be able to match references from multiple databases.

At a minimum, bibliographical software should support the following styles: MLA, APA, Chicago A, and the format for your field.

The official style for the Modern Language Association is especially tricky, since its short parenthetical references are abbreviated in a way that depends on the other sources in the text. There is no known bibliographical program for Windows or the Mac that does a good job at this.

2. Ease of use when updating the database. The user will expect the field names to be unambiguous or with easy access to the documentation for individual field characteristics. It should be easy to use abbreviations.
3. Database control. The user will want to be able to sort according to multiple keys. If possible, the user will want to be able to save search criteria.
4. Support for the web, including Z39.50 (information retrieval service and protocol; a number of bibliographical software companies provide this through a companion product, BookWhere). At present, many programs can replace underlining and italics codes with the appropriate HTML codes. In the near future, however, scholars will need more than that: They will want to mount their databases on their office PCs so that colleagues around the world may search those databases, add to them, etc.

A Chorus Bibliographical Review must mention the following things:

1. The name of the product, including the version number being reviewed.
2. The last version number.
3. Publisher information: Name, web page, email address, street address, voice phone, fax phone.
4. System hardware requirements.
5. System software requirements.
6. Availability (i.e., through retail channels, a distributor, or the publisher), including regular retail pricing and academic pricing (if any).
7. Demo version: Location if available on the web; otherwise, how to obtain it.
8. Your review, including
1. General aspects
2. Use with word processors and bibliography generation
3. Database capabilities
4. Import/Export and portability to other platforms
5. General assessment. It is here that you might want to compare the product with other programs with which you're familiar. If there are specific suggestions for improvement or workarounds for known problems, include them here.
9. Information for the categories at http://www-writing.berkeley.edu/chorus/eresearch/reviews/bibgrid/
10. Note: A key portion for the features table is timing information. In most cases, you will not supply the timing information--but it will help considerably if you can make version of the reference databases (one with 100 references, the other with 1000) for your package's format. If possible, try and convert one of the databases in the sample databases directory to your format. If that's impossible, contact the editor of the section.

You may use the review of Citation for Windows as a template. Use your File / Save As option to save the html. You will find that this review is annotated with comments that show where to insert review-specific information. Comment out any portions that don't seem relevant.

Given the wide variety of features across all bibliographical packages, here are a few specific rarities that you might want to discuss if your package supports them:

1. Support for the web. These come in all varieties. The most inventive is the ability to serve records and allow changes to the databases via the web, as in Bookends Plus for the Mac.
2. Network support. There are three basic issues: a) Can one copy of the package be installed on the network, with individual users saving their preferences, databases, and styles in local directories? b) Can multiple users get read-only access to a single shared copy of a database? [Example: Endnote.] c) Does the package support record locking so that multiple users can change the same database? [Example: Library Master for DOS.]
3. Significant support for the MLA style (see above).