Zotero, Mendeley, CiteULike

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!

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!

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

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.

We presented our idea of the Library staff competencies at the UCL Summer School this week. Also our first go at creating a Prezi-tation!

Competencies on Prezi

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....

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.

11 and a half (week 2 thing 3) things

I'm already begining to lose track of what I've done for 23 Things and what I'm doing for 11-and-a-half Things but it doens't really matter since I'm sure they will overlap anyway. I'm pretty sure I won't end up doing 34-and-a-half-Things....

Anyway 11-and-a-half (can I call this EAAH for short?) this week has me looking for social networking sites, especially for scientists. So here goes: there is Nature Network which describes itself as the 'professional networking website for scientists around the world' hosted by the Nature Publishing Group. As you'd expect, there's a collection for forums, blogs, discussion topics, as well as lists of 'neetworked' people and a helpful Q&A section. You can look at the blogs, forums etc without logging in. And apparently 'NPG Libraries' is the third 'most active' Group! I was quite impressed that a search by affiliation for Univeristy College London has over 150 hits. (searching UCL brings back results from UCLA, etc)

Another site which I stumbled across is BioMedExperts. You can't have a proper look at this one until you register, but you can have a sneak at what members' profiles look like if you use Google's advanced search - search for a name and specify within the site biomedexperts.com. It seems to be a little bot more like an online space to publicise yourself, your research activites, publications, etc.

I was alerted this morning to a newish looking site, Knowledge Blog . This is a JISC funded intiative with the aim to bring researchers together to discuss their work yet avoiding the hassle and delays of traditional  publshing/reviwing/disseminating/discussing routes. The idea is that people 'publish' their articles as blog posts, which are then peer reviewed by suitable selected experts, who also reply by blog - so the whole process is completely open (see How it works)

It seems to me that social networking is still in its infancy and in a few years time some winners will emerge on top and some losers will shuffle to the bottom into obscurity and the cyber-graveyard.... until then, any one researcher can't possibly keep up with many of the possibilities on offer for social networking - that;'s if they have the time to get involved at all! A recent RIN report has some nice nuggets of feedback from researchers about all this.

23 Things, Thing 4

Thing number 4 (23 Things) is to look at Twitter, RSS and Pushnote. Here is where I have to confess that although I do have a Twitter account, I don't use it. Already I've got too much to look at: I have a feed reader for my RSS, a Google homepage for this that and t'other, my work email, my home email, there's LinkedIn too....!

So now I'm following a few people I think look really helpful. I don't know whether I'll find time to keep tabs on Twitter as well as everything else, but obviously other people do! It seems to me that it's most useful for people with mobile devices.e.g. at conferences. I think it's so easy to get overloaded and you need to pick and choose the right tool for the right job. I do like the idea of using Twitter to ask questions though - that's one brilliant thing about Web 2.0 - if you've got a question, it's a great way to get a whole variety of helpful answers (provided anyone actually sees your question of course) - and Twitter could be really good for this.

Look at these blogs

So Thing number two for my 11-and-a-half-Things is to find blogs of interest for the biomedical community. I really like Ben Goldacre's blog http://www.badscience.net/ - you might have read the book Bad Science, which points out how and why some 'science' in the media is misleading (to put it politely) - the blog is witty and easy to read but can also be very revealing - Dr Goldacre really knows his stuff. I find some of the comments people leave useful too. It might be a good one to keep an eye on for any pertinent examples to use in information literacy or critical appraisal teaching....!

OK, for people interested in research and researchers (and who isn't?!) the Research Information Network has a couple of blogs, one for the team and one for guests - these aren't updated all that often which makes them much easier to follow in my opinion - quality over quantity! You'll notice also that the most recent guest blog was on the value of libraries which naturally goes without saying :-)

What else? Well, just wanted to mention Library Research Support by Jenny Delasalle at the University of Warwick - another excellently written blog geared to researchers. This blog often has some really useful and in-depth posts, particularly for those of us interested in research outputs, bibliometrics, publishing research and the like.

11 and a half Things

a most ingenious idea from UCL's Biomedical Libraries - the idea of 23 Things has morphed into 11 and a half Things! A shortened program which will fit into 6 weeks over the summer, for UCL's Library staff. This particular 'Things' program will focus on Web 2.0 tools which are particulary helpful for medical staff and how we librarians can support them. So 11 and a half Things kicks off tomorrow and I've got a good feeling that I might have already accomplished Thing 1....

This week's Thing to Do is about your personal online 'brand'. As I'm just starting out playing around with this I haven't thought yet about 'branding' myself but I can see how important it is, professionally, to take care over the impression you send out online - especially if you use Twitter, LinkedIn etc a lot to communicate with others.

Hello!

I'm participating in CPD23 '23 Things' and here is my first Thing!

I'm really impressed with the number of people who are participating and from all over the world! I never really thought about creating a blog before so this is all very new to me.

I'm currently working in a UK joint health/university library providing support to medical students and staff, which I really enjoy.

I think this sounds like a great way to get some hands-on with new Web 2.0 tools and will be really useful for my work.