#citeulike

Last night I could no longer resist looking at the CiteULike plugin systems, and with some guidance and pointers from @citeulike on Twitter, and some great eco system they wrote, I managed to write in a few hours two plugins, one for figshare and the other for ZENODO. They are just first drafts, and hope to get some more feedback soon. Of course, it doesn't address the fact that CiteULike doesn't have a DataSet or Software types, so they are currently stored as GEN (aka @misc{}). But that is fine, because the citation consists of title, authors, year, and a link normally anyway.

The patches:

https://github.com/egonw/citeulike/compare/feature/zenodoPlugin?expand=1

https://github.com/egonw/citeulike/compare/feature/figsharePlugin?expand=1

Recently I've been tidying up my references and reading habits. After playing with a number of paid-for applications, like Papers I've decided to stick with Bibdesk on the mac and PocketBib on iOS. Personally I find myself using CiteULike a lot more to keep the data up-to-date than any desktop apps so Bibdesk/PocketBib is really for my reference and offline reading habits rather than editing needs.

The value relationships to rapidly grow the curated content of the Actor Atlas, and share the earnings from the resulting value creation, have been announced at the Wikinetix value relationships page.

Pricing information will come available soon.

Organising your references: Zotero / Mendeley / citeulike

I am so far behind on my Things! I had a very busy summer.

So anyway. Thing 14.

The first time I had to properly think about citations was at uni. And I was bad at it! Perhaps I missed that secret lesson where they teach you how to do it (come to think of it- I did miss my library induction. Hmmmmm).

I'm pretty sure that when I was at uni there were no special short-cuts to writing your bibliography; you just kept really good records and hoped that you got everything. Even when I wrote my Masters dissertation back in 2009 I don't think I used anything like this as I was happy with the system that I had. I suppose I trusted my (extremely long-winded) method over anything that might potentially get things wrong or confuse me more.

Because I work in education I already have some ideas about these free citation tools. I'm sure at some point in my Chartership I'll probably need to use one of these.

Zotero

Unfortunately as I work in a school I am unable to use anything which involves downloading software, which automatically rules out Zotero for me. However, I am really impressed by how professional the website looks and I'm sure under other circumstances it would be useful for me.

Medeley

I enjoyed the introductory video; I thought it explains everything really well. I really like the drag and drop bit on the desktop. Unfortunately I can't download this either so I guess that kind of prevents me form using this one too! I also like the idea that you can work collaboratively with a group of people.

CiteuLike

I really like CiteULike- It reminds me of Delicious which I used to use quite a lot during my Masters. I found it especially interesting to be able to see other people's citations because I'm really nosey! I found the introductory video useful. The only problem is that as I'm not currently researching for a paper I found it hard to pick a research field for my account. In the end I settled on "education" and "study skills".

It’s been a bit of a whirlwind week for me as last Friday while I was on holiday I got a call offering me a place on the MA Librarianship at Sheffield University. This week I had to decide whether to start the MA this year, or defer until next year. Cue lots of thinking, talking to pretty much everyone I know about the decision, and even taking a vote on it at my team lunch!

  After taking a good look at the timetable and realising I could go part-time and do all my first year credits on a Monday, I opted to start this year. So in three weeks I will finish work as a graduate trainee, have the weekend to prepare, and then start the induction week! Luckily I have secured a weekend customer services position at my current university, but I will also need to find a part-time job to be able to fund my first year. My to-do list is now massive, but I’m feeling very happy.

  This is all a roundabout way of saying that this week’s Thing is going to come in handy much earlier than I expected. Back when I did my undergrad, my dissertation bibliography was compiled by hand, just like Isla who wrote the blog post for this Thing. I did have the foresight to have a dedicated dissertation notebook, in the back of which I wrote all the references I needed, so my bibliography wasn’t as painful as some of my classmates. It would have been amazing to save a lot of typing time by using an automated system though!

  EndNote

During my trainee year I’ve learned how to use EndNote to some extent, as it’s installed on the University PCs and used by the librarians in their sessions on referencing management. I’ve even assisted some students with using it (although at the time I’d barely looked at it myself!). Seeing as how I will be a poor self-financed Masters students, I don’t think I will be buying EndNote for my home laptop. So looking at the other options out there is a great idea.

  Zotero

Having taken a look at Zotero’s video, I am already sold! I like the interface and being able to save references from any webpage – this would come in really handy as I think I’ll probably be referencing a lot of blogs and other social media during my course. The notes function looks great as well (much better than EndNote’s), particularly as I will aim to note make as well as note take.

  Mendeley

I’ve heard of Mendeley as the name has been bandied around my office a lot in the last couple of months. Our skills centre has been looking at different reference management software that the librarians could be using and showing the students rather than EndNote, and this is one of the programmes they’ve been looking at.

  Having looked at Martin Fenner’s comparison table, Mendeley seems like it has the most features to offer – more than both Zotero and EndNote. One instant disadvantage I can think of is that it doesn’t seem to be linked in with Web of Science, which is recommended to pretty much every student who comes through our doors! The downside of both Zotero and Mendeley for me is that they’re not available for my Android phone – Mendeley is available for the iPad and iPhone though. It would be helpful to easily add references when I’m reading on my commute, but I guess you can’t have everything!

  CiteuLike

CiteuLike doesn’t seem as instantly useful to me, so I will hold off taking a look at it for now.