I've been using Reference MAnager and EndNote at work and I regularly teach our users on these tools. They're good. But you have to pay for them. This isn't great news for those users who don't benefit from an institutional license.
This summer we gave a short presentation to staff on web based reference management tools - Zotero, Mendeley and CiteULike (as well as EndNoteWeb, which isn't actually free, but we included as it was web based). Each tool seems to have a strong and active user group - as indicated by enthusiastic online forums - and I think people have their own favourites, depending on which they find most user friendly. It's clear though that the developers are constantly responding to user feedback and upgrading the product.
I have to say I don't use the free tools because my work is cut out already with using both EndNote and RefMan. But there's no doubt they are on the ball and offer advantages that desktop based packages don't, such as the ability to easily share references, have an online 'presence' (e.g. in the form of 'groups') and so on. Altogether more Web 2.0-y!
Saturday 17 September 2011
Monday 29 August 2011
Google docs
This is great - another thing I wish I had thought of using before. Instead of attaching files and emailing them to myself to look at when I get home, I can just pop them onto Google docs.... of course the real selling point of Google docs is the capacity for shared editing. So a number of colleagues can work on a document at the same time without having to email it back and forth. Or, a number of friends can decide collaboratively who will bring what food to the barbie!!
Google does seem to be becoming all things to all people. I just worry that after using these things and getting too attached to them that somthing bigger and better will come along and render them obsolete. Sometimes it seems like everything is moving so fast, as soon as you get the hang of one tool, another one comes along which does more, better, faster, and it's all change again....
But for the time being I think I'll see how I go with Google docs. I think once I start using it I'll be in a better position to draw some conclusions. One thing that strikes me though is the issue of copyright - I mean if people are sharing pdfs (e.g. downloading and sharing journal articles) with colleagues who don't have the same access rights? But then I suppose if people were going to break copyright law in this way thay'd already be doing that by emailing file attachments.
I don't know that I'd want to put anything too big or important on the Google Docs 'cloud' - maybe that makes it not much use, if I don't trust it 100%? Oh well - I'll see how I go...looks good to me so far!
Google does seem to be becoming all things to all people. I just worry that after using these things and getting too attached to them that somthing bigger and better will come along and render them obsolete. Sometimes it seems like everything is moving so fast, as soon as you get the hang of one tool, another one comes along which does more, better, faster, and it's all change again....
But for the time being I think I'll see how I go with Google docs. I think once I start using it I'll be in a better position to draw some conclusions. One thing that strikes me though is the issue of copyright - I mean if people are sharing pdfs (e.g. downloading and sharing journal articles) with colleagues who don't have the same access rights? But then I suppose if people were going to break copyright law in this way thay'd already be doing that by emailing file attachments.
I don't know that I'd want to put anything too big or important on the Google Docs 'cloud' - maybe that makes it not much use, if I don't trust it 100%? Oh well - I'll see how I go...looks good to me so far!
Wednesday 3 August 2011
Web 2.0 heaven
aaahh.... this is what we need! Phil Bradley has collected together all these links to Web 2.0 resources and put them into categories - extremely helpful! Thanks Phil!
Web 2.0 resources
Web 2.0 resources
Tuesday 2 August 2011
why scientists blog
I just came across this blog thanks to one of the blogs I already follow.
I liked the reasons these scientists gave (in the 'about' page) for blogging: "the use of social media has given us a tremendous outlet by which to translate and promote scientific knowledge and engage the public discourse"
which sums it up nicely, I think.
I liked the reasons these scientists gave (in the 'about' page) for blogging: "the use of social media has given us a tremendous outlet by which to translate and promote scientific knowledge and engage the public discourse"
which sums it up nicely, I think.
Thursday 21 July 2011
Bookmarks
Using online bookmarking sites sounds like a great idea - so you don't have to keep saving your favourites in your browser and you cen see them at any computer you sit down and log on at. I thought I'd check out whether I can do this without signing up to yet another online tool - I's really like to just log on to something once and have everything I need right there. So I dicovered that such a tool does of course exist in google and now I can start collecting my bookmarks in - you guessed it - google Bookmarks! Yep, added the gadget to my iGoogle page so now I'll be able to stop emailing links to myself....
Tuesday 19 July 2011
Diigo
The idea of being able to bookmark your favourite web pages is nothing new - so you can see your favourite pages wherever you are logged on. But what if you could save your favourite pages with annotations, 'sticky notes', highlight the bits of the page you found most useful, etc? That's the idea behind Diigo. I think. It's like a combination of an online 'library' and bookmarking. Looks really good actually, unfortunately the toolbar which you need to install in order to add items just point blank refuses to work on my computer. (Note: my computer is Not Happy at the moment. It works for everybody else) So I'm going to go and try it at home but for now, have a look at the introductory video at http://www.diigo.com/
Diigo V5: Collect and Highlight, Then Remember! from diigobuzz on Vimeo.
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