BibDesk is a Mac tool for creating and maintaing BibTeX bibliography files (.bib files).

BibDesk can be extended with AppleScripts, which is particularly useful for tasks such as capitalising titles of bibliography items, or protecting certain substrings in titles (so that their capitalisation is never changed when rendering the bibliography).

I found a couple of useful BibDesk scripts here on Christiaan Hofman’s website.

There are two general-purpose AppleScript libraries, and a bunch of BibDesk specific AppleScripts. The BibDesk scripts depend on these libraries.

Install Libraries

Copy the following library files

• Capitalize.scpt
• Error Reporting.scpt

to the following directory (create this directory if it doesn’t exist):

~/Library/ScriptingAdditions

Install BibDesk Scripts

Of the BibDesk scripts available on Christiaan Hofman’s website, I find the following ones useful:

• Add Protect Strings.scpt
• Capitalize Titles.scpt
• Capitalize and Protect Titles.scpt
• Downcase Titles.scpt
• Protect Titles.scpt

To install these scripts to BibDesk, copy these files to the following directory:

~/Library/Application\ Support/BibDesk/Scripts

Restart BibDesk, and now these scripts should be listed in the Scripts Menu of BibDesk.