PDFs, Bookends, and Scrivener

Looking for a new way to write the dissertation, especially since Pages has gone more or less south for me. I’m using Bookends as my bibliographic software. I’m trying to figure out the best way to integrate Bookends and the research section in Scrivener. I have quite a few annotated PDFs already in Bookends, so I’m wondering which if any of the following are true: can Scrivener and Bookends share a PDF? If I import a PDF from the Bookends into Scrivener, will my annotations survive? The idea behind the question about sharing is partly a space issue. I really don’t want to duplicate PDFs beyond necessity. Also, I’m trying to figure out how best to capitalize on the research section in Scrivener, given that already have a great deal of research in Bookends. Any thoughts, suggestions, would be most welcome! Cheers!

Yes, Scrivener can refer to PDF files rather than fully importing them into the project container. Use the File/Import/Research Files as Aliases… menu command to do so, rather than drag and drop or standard import. This will link back to the original PDF on the disk. So yes, it can share resources with Bookends, and it should be generally easy to do so since Bookends either leaves PDFs in place or copies/moves them to an all-access attachments folder in ~/Documents, depending on how you imported it into your database.

Excellent. I tried this and it works the way I wanted. You lose any comments put in there with Skim or Adobe reader but that is normal at this point in time. Same things happens in BE to a great extent. Thank you for the information, most helpful!