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INTRODUCING AN ENTIRELY NEW PROGRAM RADIUS
The first data-discriminating, boundary-breaking, web-clipping/harvesting tool
FOR IMMEDIATE USE WITH NOTA BENE
Versatile, Powerful, and Comprehensive Solutions
FOR
Academic Research and Writing
Click here to read about Nota Bene, or here to see what's new in the latest release
Unique Software. Nota Bene stands unrivaled as the only set of tightly integrated software tools specifically designed for academic needs. The suite provides a comprehensive research and writing system that nimbly handles the needs of teacher-scholars in the humanities, arts, social sciences, and related fields. Whether referencing sources, doing qualitative data analysis, engaging in web-centered research, or writing documents ranging from the simple to highly complex manuscripts for submission to journals and book publishers, Nota Bene provides the essential tools that simplify your work and expand your creative possibilities. It does so through a unified interface across all of its component applications and through their underlying synergistic connections.
For All Your Work. Designed by scholars, for scholars, there's really nothing quite like Nota Bene. That's why scholars have relied on Nota Bene for over a generation, from their first graduate seminar paper through the books that shape their academic reputations. (Others outside academe have taken notice: legal scholars, lawyers, politicians, and novelists — all those who explore ideas, craft arguments, and trade in words — have similarly trusted all their work to Nota Bene.)
Tools of the Trade. The Nota Bene Workstation provides an impressive array of tools focused especially on the needs of users who work in the humanities, arts, and social sciences. These tools cannot be found anywhere else, and it is the reason why students beginning their academic careers, and scholars at the top of theirs, find their investment in Nota Bene so worth it. These difference-making capabilities make the Nota Bene Workstation stand apart and above any other software package. There's no other better investment in your career.
In Good Company. Behind such great software tools lies great software support, available diligently through human — not algorithmic — interaction. Indeed, the strength and reliability of Nota Bene’s multi-dimensional support remains legendary among users who invariably compare it with the frustrations encountered elsewhere in the software world. In addition to company support, abundant on-screen guidance is provided by pop-up Info Tips to help guide new users. An active and supportive on-line listserv is testimony to the communal sense of Nota Bene users. Finally, a Nota Bene Friends Forum offers additional opportunities for product testing, feedback, and support.
We invite you to explore how Nota Bene can radically enhance and simplify the way you work, and find out more about the Nota Bene community, by selecting the various tabs above.
Conducting research — and getting it published — is not for
the faint-hearted.
Authors and publishers demand attention to detail throughout a project’s many interconnected parts.
Wouldn’t it be something if software would address this complex conjunction of needs though a single application, a single interface, and with all needed components coordinating in the same project?
NOTA BENE.
The Nota Bene Workstation is the multi-component integrated solution that unifies every scholarly task through a common interface in a single program.
Note Bene’s word-processing component does fancy things no other program does — it offers three independent series of footnotes (so you can create a critical edition of a medieval manuscript), more cross-referencing options than you can imagine, and professional back-of-manuscript indexing. When you add built-in academic styles, frameworks/outlines, academic research tables, and more, you understand that you now have capabilities not available anywhere else.
But it is in simplyfing complex formatting tasks that Nota Bene excels. For example, use the keyboard shortcut, or click the icon, to create a block-indented quote, and all the multiple components involved in the required layout are taken care of — inter-paragraph spacing above and below the quote, margins, and internal line-spacing, even whether or not the paragraph subsequent to the quote should be indented or not — so you can simply continue writing. We understand completely that your time should be spent in creating documents, not in formatting them.
With the Lingua add-on module, you can access a full range of IPA characters, and work in the Greek, Arabic, Hebrew, and Cyrillic alphabets, in all Nota Bene modules — you can add a bibliographic entry in Greek, or search for Arabic words in Orbis.
Ibidem is Nota Bene's powerful bibliographic database and citation system. Enter a record once (or let Archiva harvest records for you), and it will be accessible your entire career. You can search (on 32 fields at once!), sort, and produce reports using all of the word processor's power (including outputting to tables).
Ibidem excels in citing references and building end-of-document bibliographies in real time as you add, move, or delete citations, whether full form, shortened subsequent forms, using ibid., or more. Ibidem generates them automatically on the fly. Do you need to submit the paper to another journal that uses a different style? Simply select the style (from among hundreds), and with a few clicks your entire document's citation apparatus will be reformatted. (For example, citation-only notes will convert to and from in-text citations.)
And now Ibidem comes in two ways — a full version that makes everything immediately accessible (top image), and a "pop-up" mode that offers Ibidem's essential elements in a compact, floating pane (bottom image) that is perfect not only for users who operate on more restricted screen sizes, but for anyone who wants an unimpeded view of both the document and the citation/reference apparatus.
To add extraordinary power to common research activities, Ibidem records support links of all kinds — to on-line sources (web pages, including PDFs), local copies of those, images, and note-taking files. Note-taking files are full Nota Bene documents in which you take notes, save quotations, and engage in arguments relevant to the source text. Best of all, every note-taking file can become part of Orbis's universe.
IbidPlus (included as part of the Nota Bene Workstation) lets you use Ibidem's database engine to keep track of non-bibliographic records — field notes, record collections, addresses of friends, and much more
Orbis is unequalled in its abilities to search and retrieve all content. Its no-effort, no-tag, form-free coding/ annotating speeds up search and retrieval of discriminate portions of documents. And once it's identified those elusive passages, it shows them to you in a simple-to-read keyword-in-context table view, with the selected match (which can be expanded in context, all the way up to the entire file) shown below, ready for single-key insertion into your open document. (If that fragment is from a note-taking file linked to an Ibidem record, that source will be automatically brought with it, making sure that everything is properly attributed!)
Whether searching for words or phrases, alone or in Boolean combinations (where the results are shown in a useful tree-structured diagram), and whether using the precise terms or expanding the search with synonyms, Orbis can find what matters for you. Instantly.
YOUR EXPANDING DIGITAL HERMENEUTICAL CIRCLE
Everything you write in Nota Bene can
become part of this expanding circle — seeing how words are used, and arguments made, across thousands of documents, you then see things in a different light, and your reshaped argument/text itself becomes part of this — your — expanding knowledge base.
With the Orbis+ add-on module, all PDF files, saved (HTML) web pages, and Word (DOCX/DOC/RTF) and other DOCX files on your computer, even further extending the circle. With Orbis+, there's hardly a useful bit of text on your computer that you can't search and retrieve effortlessly.
The Nota Bene Workstation now includes components of Archiva that assist you in building your Ibidem library by including both works found in an Archiva search of on-line libraries (over 500 are included) as well as citations captured from web pages such as JSTOR, Project Muse, EBSCO, and selected other aggregators
Note: the first few options shown in the Archiva dialog are included in the Nota Bene Workstation; the others shown are features of Archiva+
Archiva+, a new add-on module, extends the built-in Archiva's record-creating functions to include conversion of digital versions of formatted bibliographies (in five major styles) into structured Ibidem records, as well as the ability to build bibliographic records from ISBN numbers, both from well-structured lists, or by extracting them from within free-form text files
The ability to mine free-form text files in virtually any format for ISBN numbers
lets you use virtually any (there are many free apps) smart phone ISBN bar-code scanner
(that can send the results in a file to your computer) to add works to your library!
Taken together, these tools can fundamentally reshape your work — simplifying the tedious, and opening up creative possibilities.
AUTOMATION — SPEED and CONSISTENCY
Select the needed academic style at the time of creating a document. And with that, every element of that style is now embedded. No messing around in mid-document with settings to suit needed changes in layouts: every type of paragraph is automatically formatted, with line-spacing, indentation, margins, heading size and location, block quotes, all handled automatically.
References are formatted instantaneously as they are cited; pasted citations are automatically re-formatted; bibliographies are auto-generated in real time. Non-standard sources (e.g., unpublished archival manuscripts) are cited according to one-time entry of user’s specialized requirements.
And if a different academic style is needed, one click will re-format every element of the document to conform to the newly selected style. Automation throughout: from Front Matter to Back Matter.
CONFIDENCE IN EVERY MOVE
We recognize that our job begins from the moment you start Nota Bene. We know that your job is to research, create, write, and that ours is to facilitate, to automate. Thus Nota Bene incorporates facilitators to nurture your user confidence, providing brief pop-up tips, as needed, in real-time to explain the program’s action and guide your selection every step of the way. As you become familiar with the interface, these Info Tips can be turned off individually or comprehensively.
Click anywhere on the image below to see how the various components of Nota Bene work together as part of a seamless whole, addressing all your research needs.
All programs intersecting or inside the black, green, and blue circles
are included in the core Nota Bene Workstation.
Those outside, with yellow arrows, are seamlessly integrated add-on modules.
A Program. A Company. A Community.
For more than a generation, Nota Bene’s singular dedication to serve the needs of academic work — something we, too, know about — along with our highly-regarded support, has led to forging a genuine community of users. Whether as a workaday user, or a member of the "Friends of Nota Bene" (a group of scholars who have banded together to support the software they rely on with testing, feedback, and financial resources), you're part of a software community that stands out from the cacophony of techie self-described gurus.
In a world where so many software companies are trying to figure out how to maximize revenues by gathering data so that they can sell you more stuff (of the kind you already have), we remain committed to our original vision — creating software that provides the tools that help you explore territories you've not visited before, so you can open up new worlds to all of us. Our commitment is to create the tools that will let you write, teach, mentor, and create.
Thus, Nota Bene has created a special environment, one that has long been defined by its out-of-the-ordinary characteristics. It is not your usual program. It is not your typical software company. And it gathers around it an exceptional community of users.
Nota Bene began in 1982 when a philosophy graduate student decided that he needed more than just a generic word processor to facilitate the kind of research and writing involved in working on his doctoral dissertation. What an academic life required, he thought, was a set of seamlessly intergrated tools that would handle all aspects of the scholarly endeavor — not just writing (but of course with a program that could fluidly handle footnotes and cross references), but also a way to simplify citations, and, most of all, to give access to notes and previous work so he could revisit texts and arguments, all as part of an every expanding knowledge-production system that he could draw on over the course of his entire scholarly career.
Storied History. That academic work required specialized tools designed with academic needs front and center was a novel idea, and people took notice of the program that embodied that vision, Nota Bene. It was endorsed upon its release by the Modern Language Association, distributed in Europe by Oxford University Press, and ranked — despite remaining resolutely focused on academic needs — as the best word processor in the world by PC Magazine.
Leading-Edge Tools. Why? Because from the very beginning we did things that nobody else even imagined. We implemented text retrieval — at the very heart of the program — over a decade before Google even existed. We made special use of the "@" symbol before Twitter was born. We offered on-screen Greek, Hebrew, Cyrillic, and phonetic characters before anyone else. And we devised the first fully integrated bibliographic database and reference system, with better formatted citations that were updated in place.
Exceptional Vision. But the genius behind Nota Bene — what makes it unique even today — was the incorporation of all these tools within a single, seamlessly integrated system, with a uniform interface and a relentless focus on the very singular needs of graduate students and professors. Others sought to monetize their efforts by appealing to broad audiences; we followed you so your work could flourish. To this day, no other company has been bold or innovative enough to imagine that your needs deserve undivided attention.
Consistent History. We have never strayed from our foundational commitment — to meet the needs of the academic/research community. As unique as Nota Bene was the day it was first released, newly implemented capabilities make it stand out even more from other software. We have a demonstrable history of continuous improvement, regularly adding capabilities designed to make your work easier, and more creative. And we're not done. To see where we are headed, take a quick look at the recent past:
The core applications include the Nota Bene word processor, specialized for academic writing and research, ORBIS (search thousands of your NB files and instantly find every paragraph that matches your search terms), IBIDEM (build a personal bibliographic database and use it to insert properly formatted citations and generate bibliographies), ARCHIVA (search on-line libraries and capture citations from sites such as JStor and Project Muse to build your Ibidem databases), and IBIDPLUS (customize Ibidem to create non-bibliographic databases).
What else is available?
Three enhancements to these applications can be purchased for use with the Nota Bene Workstation: LINGUA, ORBIS+, and ARCHIVA+.
Lingua extends the suite’s linguistic capabilities beyond Western characters to include Hebrew, Arabic, Cyrillic, and Greek, along with IPA and other extended Roman alphabet characters and symbols. Additional language support is available for biblical scholars and classicists including Syriac, Coptic, Akkadian and Ugaritic.
Orbis+ extends the search and retrieval capabilities of ORBIS to incorporate additional file formats including PDF, HTML (saved files), DOCX, DOC, and RTF.
Archiva+ extends the web-centric research options of the built-in Archiva to build bibliographic records from ISBN numbers, including those scanned in by virtually any smartphone barcode scanner app, as well as from already-formatted bibliographies in selected styles.
Can I purchase individual applications in the Nota Bene suite?
Nota Bene’s design is based on the integration of its component applications. Unlike other suites that provide entirely unrelated programs, the interaction among the Nota Bene component programs gives the suite its exceptional strengths and operational advantages. No application would work by itself.
Does the fact that Nota Bene comes as a suite of integrated programs mean that it’s offered as a single price?
The Nota Bene Workstation, with its core applications, is sold for a single price.
Are discounts available?
Yes. Students can purchase Nota Bene Workstation at a reduced price. Full-time or part-time graduate students, undergraduate students, and seminary students all qualify. Our base price is for those who are not students — faculty, independent scholars, retired faculty, novelists, serious writers, and anyone else. We also offer group discounts. If you think that others at your institution would be interested in Nota Bene, please contact sales@notabene.com for details.
Why should I spend money on Nota Bene when I already have a word processor, and I can get other tools I need (such as Zotero) at no cost?
The simple answer is because you matter — your time matters, your career matters. You are in this for the long haul, and you deserve software that enhances your work by taking care of the mindless details so you can pursue your intellectual passions. Every artisan has tools appropriate to their trade. Nota Bene is the one indispensible tool for what you do, for who you are — there is no other suite of comprehensive, integrated tools designed for the kind of work you do, anywhere. It's your career, after all, so doesn't it make sense to invest in it?
At the most basic level, Nota Bene can save you so much time and tedium (simply in formatting of documents, and citations) that (even if you calculate your time at minimim wage) you'll soon come out ahead in terms of actual cost. (Nota Bene actually is really quite affordable to begin with.) But much more importantly, the research tools in Nota Bene provide resources that can creatively shape your entire scholarly career. That's especially true of Orbis. We hear all the time from Nota Bene users that Orbis helped them see things that they would otherwise have missed, and that they ended up writing something different than what they originally expected to because of seeing how words are used, and arguments made, in the disparate texts that Orbis brings together for them. That, as the familiar marketing adage goes, is priceless.
Does Nota Bene run on a Mac?
Yes. Nota Bene runs on Macs running the latest Mac OS, Sequoia, as well as any version starting with High Sierra (10.13), including Mojave, Catalina, Big Sur, Monterey, Ventura, and Sonoma, including those with the new Apple M1 , M2, and M3 chips. The Mac version comes as a bundled version of Crossover and Nota Bene, with both programs installed in a single installation. For more information, see Nota Bene on Mac
Will it take time to learn how to use Nota Bene? Is it "intuitive"?
There are lots of standards in the computer software world, and Nota Bene fits right in. So yes, lots of things are "intuitive." And even more things are just much easier. Some of these will pop out at you if you take a quick look at the videos.
But on the other hand (did we say that the person who started NB while working on his dissertation was a student of philosophy?), "intuition" is a tricky concept, not least because it suggests that we might already know everything that is important. But as teachers, your task, your passion, is to teach, that is, to get your students to encounter something new, something that they didn't know before, something that isn't, at least in the beginning, exactly "intuitive." That's an essential part of what it means to learn. And we won't deny that there is some learning involved when using some of Nota Bene's advanced capabilities. Again, you have guides (in the vidoes, in the PDF tutorials, and in the extensive on-line help manual). But what we are absolutely confident of is that even if something takes a bit of learning, it will be worth it, many times over, in terms of increased productivity and creativity over the course of your entire scholarly career.
What do I do with all the files I’ve written with Microsoft Word?
Nota Bene easily converts files from MS Word. Conversions range from a simple process of copy-and-paste to one that results in a native Nota Bene document completely devoid of the formatting “command clutter” in the original Word file. We provide a detailed video tutorial dedicated to this topic.
Nota Bene 14 significantly extends this capability with its “Smart Document Conversion” which identifies Zotero citations in the original DOCX file, and then not only adds those items to your selected Ibidem database, but also converts those cites into Ibidem's smart citations, automatically creating subsequent shortened forms, or "ibid.," etc. forms, as required by your active style. In addition, a wizard-like interface lets you add Nota Bene's advanced framework/outline structure to the document. The result is a genuinely “smart” document that gives you sophisticated control over all your work.
Will I have to deal with data from different bibliographic management programs, one for Ibidem and one for Zotero, or Ibidem and Endnote?
No, we wouldn’t do that to you: you will have a single, comprehensive bibliographic database. Ibidem has filters that import data from different programs, including Zotero, Endnote, RIS, RefWorks, Mendeley and others. We offer a video tutorial covering this topic.
My university’s graduate school office requires that theses and dissertations follow its own formatting guidelines. Are the built-in styles in Nota Bene fixed in stone?
Nota Bene’s academic styles library already includes styles required by several academic institutions. For students at other universities, we recommend selecting the University of Chicago Dissertation Style. Many graduate school offices require the UC dissertation style or slight variations.
The University of Chicago Dissertation style includes settings that meet the requirements of many graduate schools, such as a left margin of 1.5 inches and single-spaced footnotes, separated by double-spaces with superscripted numbers.
The easiest way to change some of the settings in a research document based on an academic style, for example, margins, is done by clicking on Format, Page Layout... and change values where needed. In this case, click on the right arrow to increase the left margin to 1.5 inches. And make sure to Apply the changes to the Document Default.
Computers running Microsoft Windows 7 and higher, including Windows 8, 10, and 11
Macs with Intel and M1, M2, and M3 chips, running the latest Mac OS, Sequoia, as well as any version starting with High Sierra (10.13), including Mojave, Catalina, Big Sur, Monterey, Ventura, and Sonoma
The Mac version comes with a bundled version of Crossover, a program that lets Windows programs run "as if they were designed native to the Mac"
Nota Bene on the Mac is a single installation that both installs, and then runs, like other Mac applications, using the Finder dialog for all file management, and taking full advantage of Retina displays
Linux and Android computers that can run Wine. (Wine is a program that converts Windows functions to run on non-Windows systems, without requiring Windows.)
Note: users are responsible for installing Wine on their Linux or Android devices (we cannot offer technical support for this part of the process).
Nota Bene lets you use file synchronization programs (such as iCloud, OneDrive, Google Drive, Dropbox, etc.) to save all your Nota Bene work (files and databases) in the cloud, without any specific-to-Nota-Bene setup.
