Structure

Scholar's Aid program package includes a bibliographical data manager called Library, an importing/exporting manager called DataRetriever, and a notes/information manager called Notes.

Operation

Library manages bibliographical data drawn from a wide range of sources (books, articles, Internet web sites, etc.) and generates the common forms of citations (i.e., footnotes, endnotes, etc.) and bibliographies. The format of the resulting reference can conform to one of the standard styles (e.g., Chicago, APA, etc.) or to a style designed by users to meet their own specific requirements.

Notes manages quotes, notes, web pages, and other information in a hierarchical structure. Each note can be linked to its source in the Library module in such a way that, when a user transfers any text from the note into a word processing program, Notes automatically makes a citation with the text transferred in the open document.

DataRetriever transforms external data such as z39.50

Z39.50

Z39.50 is a client–server protocol for searching and retrieving information from remote computer databases. It is covered by ANSI/NISO standard Z39.50, and ISO standard 23950. The standard's maintenance agency is the Library of Congress....

 data to Scholar's Aid data and exports Scholar's Aid data as various formats such as XML

XML

Extensible Markup Language is a set of rules for encoding documents in machine-readable form. It is defined in the XML 1.0 Specification produced by the W3C, and several other related specifications, all gratis open standards....

 and plain text

Plain text

In computing, plain text is the contents of an ordinary sequential file readable as textual material without much processing, usually opposed to formatted text....

.