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I have started a new Blog to keep primarily ISU faculty, staff, and students up-to-date with the latest tools related to bibliographic management applications, primarily EndNote, EndNote Web, and Zotero. Anyone using these tools may benefit from the information shared. I will try to tag those items that exclusivly related to Iowa State University such as upcoming workshops.
The address is http://citehelp.blogspot.com/
Thanks -- Stephen
Wired Campus: Judge Dismisses Software-Licensing Case Against George Mason U. - Chronicle.com
Judge Dismisses Software-Licensing Case Against George Mason U.
A Virginia Circuit Court judge dismissed a lawsuit this morning against George Mason University’s Center for History and New Media.
Thomson Reuters Inc. had sued the university in a Virginia court in September for at least $10-million in damages, claiming that Zotero, a free software tool created by the university, made improper use of the company’s EndNote citation software.
Zotero is a plug-in for the Firefox Web browser that is designed to help scholars store and organize their online research. The program, which could convert EndNote files, had been downloaded over one million times by September.
George Mason University said in November it had not renewed a site license for EndNote, and would not make any changes to its software.
A spokesman for the university confirmed the case had been dismissed but declined to comment further. Officials at Thomson Reuters were not immediately available for comment on the dismissal. — Marc Beja
Wired Campus: Judge Dismisses Software-Licensing Case Against George Mason U. - Chronicle.com
Thomson Reuters harassing Zotero community
I, along with presumably 285 other people who are interested in Zotero's development got this email this afternoon:
Dear Zotero Development Community Members,
First off, please allow me to apologize for clogging your inbox with this unsolicited message, but I hope you'll understand that the severity of the situation requires me to contact you. In its ongoing litigation with George Mason University, Thomson Reuters has demanded that the university produce contact information (name, email, and username) associated with all two hundred eighty-six Zotero SVN/Trac accounts.
We can think of no use Thomson Reuters's counsel would have for this information other than to intimidate and harass you, and we made every effort to avoid turning over this information until compelled. We have requested that the contact information be placed under protective order, which in principle means that only the lawyers involved should have access to the information. Nonetheless, we feel it is our obligation to notify you that we are being forced to release this data. Please note that you are in no way required or requested to keep this disclosure confidential. If you are contacted by Thomson Reuters or their attorneys in connection with this lawsuit, please do let us know.
We deeply apologize for this encroachment on your privacy, and we sincerely hope that it does not dissuade you from remaining active members of the Zotero development community.
If I get any email from the Thomson Reuter's lawyers, I'll be sure to post them in full. I'm also canceling my subscription to the Globe and Mail.Posted by Adam Crymble at 3:43 PM
Thoughts on Public History by Adam Crymble: Thomson Reuters harassing Zotero community
What are COinS?
ContextObjects in Spans (COinS) is a method to embed bibliographic information about available references into the HTML code of a web page by using a "span" element. Span elements are hidden in the HTML code and therefore internet users won't notice COinS unless they have installed a modern browser software (e.g. Firefox) and a specific extension which discovers the hidden information. COinS re-use the elements defined by the OpenURL standard, e.g. the article title is marked as "rft.atitle". This is how HTML code looks like with COinS element included:
What is WebCite®?
WebCite®, a member of the International Internet Preservation Consortium, is an on-demand archiving system for webreferences (cited webpages and websites, or other kinds of Internet-accessible digital objects), which can be used by authors, editors, and publishers of scholarly papers and books, to ensure that cited webmaterial will remain available to readers in the future. If cited webreferences in journal articles, books etc. are not archived, future readers may encounter a "404 File Not Found" error when clicking on a cited URL. Try it! Archive a URL here. It's free and takes only 30 seconds.
A WebCite®-enhanced reference is a reference which contains - in addition to the original live URL (which can and probably will disappear in the future, or its content may change) - a link to an archived copy of the material, exactly as the citing author saw it when he accessed the cited material.
Mendeley Snags $2 Million In Early-Stage Funding For Research Paper Management Tool
by Robin Wauters on February 25, 2009
Mendeley, makers of a desktop and web application designed to make it easier for academics to manage and discover relevant research papers on any topic, has raised $2 million in early-stage funding from some high-profile investors, including Stefan Glänzer
, early seed investor in and former Chairman of Last.fm, former Executive VP of Digital Strategy and Business Development for Warner Music Group Alex Zubillaga and ASI
The connection with the popular social music network Last.fm doesn’t stop there, since the company is pushing to become the “Last.fm for research”, which means the startup essentially aims to enable academics to manage and sharing their research paper inventory and at the same time discover like-minded people and papers thanks to a recommendation and matching algorithm.
I registered for the service and downloaded the Windows version of the desktop app (it’s available for Mac OSX and Linux too) to give it a whirl. First thing I noticed is that you can easily invite fellow academics from your network to join Mendeley based on existing accounts for LinkedIn, Gmail, Windows Live, etc. I also took note of the fact that your profile settings, which include information about your field of research, a CV, etc. automatically has you signed up for the company newsletter, which I think should be optional. My entirely fake public profile can be located here
The desktop app is actually quite nice: after installation, you can import PDF files using the tool’s “Automatic Medata Extraction” or import your existing library from EndNote XML, BibTeX or RIS files. Mendeley also features a Word Plugin which lets you insert citations and create formatted bibliographies in documents using Microsoft Word 2003/2007. Academics can also upload their own research papers and syncing files and information with the web-based version with just one click of the mouse. Mendeley also boasts features that let members connect with their peers online, and - taking a page from Facebook - the tool also features a newsfeed that displays newly shared or uploaded documents etc.
Mendeley claims to have “scrobbled” data on almost 3 million research papers in just two months, so it’s likely to become one hell of a resource if growth continues and enough academics take notice.
Similar services include Labmeeting (which we likened to a “social network for scientists”), Academia.edu
If you know of any others, please share in comments.
Others:
Another company that is related here is Biowizard. While it does not work within the context of a research paper for footnoting, there are a lot of Digg-like social features to help find the best and most relevant research. More importantly, it also includes proprietary data on research presented at conferences, which is usually 1-2 years ahead of when it gets formally published. As such, it is the only place to stay up to date on the most current happenings in biomedical research.
A non-software and download alternative is twidox. Focus is on documents rather than the social-networking and now has over 30.000 already.
scholarz.net which is also a German concept by the way.
For computer science, Eventseer (http://eventseer.net) provides an alternative take on social networking for researchers. We mine the web for existing relations between scientists and use the information to help users find upcoming conferences and events that are relevant for them, or even other researchers that they might be interested in following.
CiteULike is similar; it’s a website that allows the building of collaborative bibliographies.
Since we’re talking about Mendeley, it is also worth mentioning Papers, which attempts to be the iTunes of reference managers rather than the Last.fm. I’m using this at the moment, but it’s not without its problems, so I’m always looking for alternatives.
Other reference managers worthy of note are connotea (http://www.connotea.org/) and Zotero (http://www.zotero.org/).
A related type of program is a research collaboration system. Laboratree (http://www.laboratree.org) is a system facilitates collaboration within and between organizations.
wePapers and Zotero
ResearchGate.net, fast growing social network for scientists, strong especially life sciences.
Basecamp/ Backpack for scientists, then Lab Engine (http://www.labenginehq.com) might be of interest to you
research grant application to Grants.gov (for the federal dollars). Check out Cayuse and Subawards.com.
Mendeley Snags $2 Million In Early-Stage Funding For Research Paper Management Tool
Zotero Blog » Blog Archive » Zotero 1.5 Beta Released: Join Us In The Clouds
Zotero 1.5 Beta Released: Join Us In The Clouds
Posted February 23rd, 2009 by Trevor
We are excited to announce two major releases. This morning the Zotero team launched both Zotero 1.5 and the first release of Zotero’s web application. Watch the screencast below for details on 1.5 and see the list below for a brief list of Zotero’s new features.
Zotero Blog » Blog Archive » Zotero 1.5 Beta Released: Join Us In The Clouds
Vertov is a free media annotating plugin for Zotero, an innovative, easy-to-use, and infinitely extendable research tool. Both are Firefox extensions. Vertov allows you to cut video and audio files into clips, annotate the clips, and integrate your annotations with other research sources and notes stored in Zotero.
« Publish Zotero Collections Online With Zotz
Analyze Your Zotero Data with the SEASR analytics plugin
February 2nd, 2009 by TrevorZotero just became an even more useful platform for research management. We are excited to announce Zotero’s first data mining plugin. The initial launch of SEASR Analytics for Zotero allows users to use SEASR’s author centrality analysis, author degree distribution analysis, and author hit analysis on items in their collections. These three functions are just the begining, but they already demonstrate the potential for leveraging SEASR’s data mining capabilities inside Zotero. Download the plugin today, and give it a try.
This entry was posted on Monday, February 2nd, 2009 at 11:40 am and is filed under News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.
Assemble A No-Fuss Mailing List Using Zotero & Gmail | MakeUseOf.com
Assemble A No-Fuss Mailing List Using Zotero & Gmail
Jan. 22nd, 2009 By James Withers
Say goodbye to ‘copy & paste’. There are easier ways to organize information. Zotero, a handy Firefox extension, picks up where Google’s ailing Notebook application leaves off.
Marketed as a research tool, it is actually a tiny miracle. Not only can it be used to bookmark information, but it also permits its user to highlight or add sticky notes to pages. Furthermore, it sports an impressive search capability, just as Google Notebook has done.
Fortunately, Zotero also allows users to drag and drop highlighted information directly into a note, eliminating the need to press a “clip” or “paste” button. For this reason, Zotero is an excellent program to use if you desire to put together a mailing list.
Download Zotero
Zotero is a free & handy piece of software that is easy to install. Equipped with a portable bookmarking tool, the Zotero application provides space for you to deposit information you discover on the internet. Doing so is easy. Once downloaded, Zotero’s extension can be opened from the bottom corner of your screen (just like Google’s soon defunct Notebook extension). Once opened, it will expand to fill a third of the screen.
To get started with a new notebook, you will only need to press an icon titled “New Standalone Note” and begin to type into a blank page in the 3rd column of the Zotero pane. Next, highlight any information from the internet that is of particular interest to you, just as you would do if you were preparing to copy & paste it into a document . However, instead of needing to worry about opening up a Word document, you can simply drag the info directly into the notebook. Here, it can be modified, and can later be exported by being dragged outside of the notebook to a desired spot.
In addition to this convenient drag & drop feature, Zotero also permits users to simply record a page’s URL, as well as record a screenshot of the page.
Research Your Prospects
Plenty of information exists online to suit the needs of a wide range of aspiring entrepreneurs. When useful email addresses are collected in one place, they can be worth a pretty penny. Instead of worrying about needing to purchase this information from data gathering experts, why not just gather it yourself?
Since Zotero’s extension does not require repeated users to enter user IDs and passwords, it is an easy place to store useful information about potential business prospects. In fact, getting in and out of Zotero is even easier than logging onto the internet.
Open & Title a New Standalone Note
While Zotero permits you to tag items with the URL code from which they originate, the easiest way to save email addresses is to simply drop them one by one into a standalone note. Should you later have questions about the email address you’ve saved, you can always Google the email address in question and you’ll most likely get a list of results that includes the site from which you extracted the address.
Conveniently, Zotero automatically saves your work, just as Google’s Notebook & Google Docs does. This can be a lifesaver if you’re called away by an instant message, by a co-worker, or by a family member.
Send Your Mail Via Gmail
I recommend Gmail over Hotmail because, of the two, Zotero proved to be more compatible with Gmail when I performed a side-by-side comparison. A chunk of email addresses can be pulled out of your Zotero notebook and dropped directly into the BCC line of an email. Although Standard Edition Google accounts permit users to send 500 emails per day to external recipients, Google itself recommends to users to bypass this restriction by creating multiple email accounts.
And this is the least of what Zotero can do. Although using Zotero takes a little work & ingenuity, it is a real lifesaver in the end. It frees up your energy to tackle complex projects without having to worry about getting overwhelmed.
Better Than Google Notebook?
Now it’s time for the big question: Do you feel like Zotero is a worthy replacement to Google Notebook? Let us know if you’ve tried Zotero yet. If you have, how do you like it? Do you have any tips for others about how to make the most of Zotero?
Photo Credit : Smil
Photo Credit : Crumj(By) James Withers--a firm believer that fun & entertaining posts are what makes the web go around. Explore his corner on the web at Associated Content.
Assemble A No-Fuss Mailing List Using Zotero & Gmail | MakeUseOf.com
More citation stuff to look at.....HSM
vfowler blog » soul searching on the web - in the clouds « Blog Archive
For citations, I’ve been using a few great tools. First, I rely on the wonderful and easy to use CiteMachine to generate standard bibliographic and in-text citations. Second, to automate the citation process as much as possible, I’ve recently been trying out Zotero which works alone on your computer.
In addition, for online reference management, I’m experimenting with CiteULike which is designed for scholarly papers, thanks Janette Treanor for pointing out this one; and thanks to Fiona Stace’s thread post, Connotea. Given the nature of the medium and the subject content, why anyone would record this information on their own computer beats me. Are we rocketeering towards cloud computing? (What is cloud computing? - on YouTube)
Finally, now it should be easy enough for me to access, retrieve, understand, contextualise and recall why I saved these resources any time in the foreseeable future. In my next post, annotations of the best 3 results sourced from my search query “winter dreaming” film screening. For evaluating sources of information, check out a later post.
References
- The Ohio State University Libraries, (2007, September 19). Web Search Tools.
- Retrieved August 22, 2008, from net.TUTOR website: http://liblearn.osu.edu/tutor/les5/
- Cohen, L (2008, January). Boolean Searching on the Internet.
- Retrieved August 22, 2008, from Internet Tutorials website: http://www.internettutorials.net/boolean.html
- Google, (n.d.). Google Scholar Help.
- Retrieved August 22, 2008, from Google Scholar website: http://scholar.google.com.au/intl/en/scholar/help.html
vfowler blog » soul searching on the web - in the clouds « Blog Archive
Tools for collecting, managing and sharing citations « KOnnect
Tools for collecting, managing and sharing citations
Our KOOLTools wiki includes an evaluation of an application called Piggy Bank, a plug-in for Firefox which acts like an extended bookmarking system, allowing you to gather rich metadata for any number and type of web-based resources, linking related items automatically via shared metadata values, or via user-entered tags. Piggy Bank is just one product among many developed under the Simile project at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).
Exhibit
Exhibit is a web application from the same stable as Piggy Bank. Exhibit supports the collation and presentation of collections of resources on specific topics, like this research database on musical composers. Since Exhibit was first released in late 2006, thousands of examples have been developed. When reviewing them, the Simile developers noticed that many were little more than lists of publications or bibliographies. Since Exhibit requires a modicum of tinkering with HTML code, they decided to build another application which could be used for bibliographies and citations straight out of the box by non-technical users. The result is Citeline, whose release has just been announced.
Citeline
Citeline is a web-based WYSIWYG edit-search-and-display application allowing the sharing of citation
collections from any existing citation application which can exort in the BibTex format. Citeline is a freely available service designed and developed by the SIMILE Project and run and maintained by the MIT Libraries. It is open for anybody to use, inside and outside the MIT community and it’s intended to provide a path for the publication of citation data on the web in a structured and re-usable way. Citeline can be found here where there are a couple of examples to explore.Zotz
Simultaneously with Citeline, the Simile folks have announced Zotz, a Firefox add-on which adds Citeline
exporting functionality to Zotero, allowing you to publish your Zotero library of citations (or only a
subset, if you wish) on the web. The Simile Blog elaborates: “And not in a static boring HTML table like
most BibTeX->web software out there, in a highly interactive page, right from your own web site but without
having you to install (or convince others to install) additional software on the server.” If you’re wondering where the name ‘Zotz’ came from, see the next item.Zotero
While Exhibit, Citeline and Zotz are all in the ‘interesting’ category, first impressions of Zotero lie somewhere on the borderline between ‘impressive!’ and ‘Wow!’. Zotero is a free, easy-to-use Firefox add-on which helps you to collect, manage and cite your research resources. If you undertake research of any kind on the Web, then view this quick tour. Chances are, you’ll be downloading it straight away, as I am going to do now.
If you would like to review Exhibit, Citeline, Zotz or Zotero for KOOLTools then please post a comment here.
Tools for collecting, managing and sharing citations « KOnnect
Mrs. Mecomber’s Scrapbook » Blog Archive » Great Educational Freeware
Great Educational Freeware
educational programs, free stuff August 17th, 2008It’s back to school time! Software has made incredible leaps and bounds since my daughter began her elementary classes with Windows 3.1 and DOS. Wow, that seems like eons ago! Here are some good free software I’ve compiled for your scholars of all ages. Be aware that I have not tried all these programs, but they are all freeware at this writing, and they all come with good reviews from sources like C|Net.
Graph
This is sophisticated but simple software that enables you to build coordinate graphs for mathematics.Zotero
A Firefox add-on that helps you collect, manage and cite resources and references from the Internet. It looks like a great program for any kind of writing assignment. I’m going to have my daughter try it out.Owl & Mouse Games and Maps
Some of the best freeware educational programs are here. They are still favorites with my older kids- I wrote a detailed review of these free programs here.Hulu TV
This is a website with loads of documentary and educational videos, all free of you have the Internet speed to run them. There are also “regular” TV shows, so you may need to monitor Johnny to make sure he’s not watching Gilligan’s Island.iCue
Another free video website, done by NBC. It’s a compilation of old and new NBC news videos and specials.Flashcards Friends
A nice website with loads of virtual flashcards. It’s has a lot for children, but it also has a lot of educational stuff that interests adults, too.Merriam Webster’s Concise Dictionary
Yep, the whole dictionary, downloaded in a searchable program. I used it for a while until I got a small search bar add-on for Firefox. But this is very handy for those times you are not online and if you don’t use Firefox browser.I’ll keep the list short for now. I’m on the prowl for more stuff, so stay tuned for further posts on this topic!
Mrs. Mecomber’s Scrapbook » Blog Archive » Great Educational Freeware
"Need to look at the free versions of noodlebib, easybib and bibme" -- HSM
Bibliographies - the lazy way
Remember when writing essays, articles and academic papers meant last-minute chasing round the desk, the library and the kitchen drawer for that vital reference you quoted at least three times? Bad temper, tears, kicked cats - all that has gone. Or it should have gone. These days, you can even hire someone to do all your citations for you at a very reasonable number of cents or dollars per page.
NoodleBibs Express is one of the best free sources of help for occasional references but you can also sign up to their main service for under a dollar a month. EasyBib and BibMe are also useful for pre-degree-level work.
For more advanced academic work, most researchers will be gratefully aware that EBSCO now permits automatic export of citations - so all you have to do is remember to check the box to spare yourself hours of wondering which ‘Smith’ published that most helpful statistic on which you based your best paragraph. You can also use free tools such as CiteULike, Zotero, KnightCite, or Citation Builder. Of these, Zotero is particularly useful for Firefox users as it sits in the browser.
More commercial and sophisticated products such as RefWorks and EndNote do exist although, if you are interested in lazy ways to get your bibliography done, you probably don’t need these. As tools they are solid, but for most people brought up in an era of Web2.0 tools that make bookmarking, tagging and electronic ’sticky notes’ part of their lives, they are perhpas best used only if provided as part of a ‘free’ university library package.
Bibliographies - the lazy way « Gillian’s Learning and Qualifications Blog
need to look at this ..... to see if I can /want to look at creating any translators for Z0tero....HSM
Good information on backing up Zotero until the commons gets up and running -- HSM
For those who have not backed up their Zotero databases. Zotero is brilliant, but one feature it needs is an easy way to backup the data. No one wants to have to recreate the database for a whole thesis or book! Till the wonderful people who program Zotero get that fixed here's how to DIY a backup (with a video for those who like to SEE how:
In "Documents and Settings" under "Application Data" and hidden under "Mozilla" in the "Firefox/Profiles" directory is one for "Zotero" just COPY that to a CD or memory stick and you are safe(r).
Need to look at LibX....Good place to start....HSM
LibX and Zotero: Firefox Extensions for Librarians and Library Patrons
Library 2.0: An Academic's Perspective
An article in Inside Higher Ed just caught my eye, "Pooling Scholars' Digital Resources ". The article described something that is hopeful for social scholarship, ominous for libraries.
The brief article describes the advent of Zotero Commons, a collaboration of George Mason University's Center for History and New Media and the Internet Archive. The purpose is to create an archive of scholarly resources, contributed by working scholars, in the public domain. The archive will offer a free optical scanning service to make the documents searchable.
Scholars will upload documents to the archive with an enhanced version of the Zotero plugin for Firefox. Imagine scholars contributing documents that they've annotated with Zotero and you get one of the great ideas behind this initiative. This version of the plugin will also allow scholars to collaborate on materials on a shared server.
Score one for social scholarship. Score a big one. But where are libraries in all of this? Andy Guess, the author of the article, has an answer. Here is his opening paragraph:
The various and competing efforts to digitize university libraries’ vast holdings have no lack of ambition, but access to documents and copyright issues have been two factors slowing the development of online scholarly repositories. Now, an effort at George Mason University seeks to bypass libraries entirely and delve into scholars’ file cabinets instead.
Bypass libraries entirely.
Apparently, we libraries are a) not innovative enough to solve the problem of access, and b) too caught up in copyright issues to be of much use in the age of social scholarship.
Is this a fair comment? On the face of it, not really. First of all, I'm not sure that access and copyright are the main things holding us back. And second, these are issues that concern us and rightly so.
I think the problem goes deeper. I see no evidence that academic libraries have it in them to band together to sponsor a project like Zotero Commons. We don't have the group vision. If we did, we'd be doing it.
There seems to be promise in the Open Content Alliance. The OCA is also associated with the Internet Archive and includes content from academic library collections. But here's the heart of the matter, the operative phrase "library collections". We need to be looking beyond the realm of our collections and figuring out our role in the process of scholarship. This is where our profession doesn't seem to get it. This is why an initiative such as Zotero Commons has no library involvement.
Our collections are our bedrock, but the notion - and reality - of collections are changing. The scholarship that makes use of these collections is changing. The Zotero Commons might contribute to that. " “I think it’s really going to have an impact on the way that scholarship is done.” So says the Center director. This may be overly optimistic, maybe not. But when two notable groups get together with this goal in mind, academic libraries should sit up and take notice. We should ask ourselves why we aren't involved. We should wonder why we didn't think of this ourselves. We should ponder what this says about us, and our role - and our concept of our role - on campus.
Bypass libraries entirely. It's so disheartening to read this.
Posted by Laura Cohen at 01:45 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Some information taken from http://www.academicproductivity.com/blog/2007/on-metadata-indexing-and-mucking-around-with-pdfs/
OASIS OpenDocument Format (ODF) could be the solution for this. It seems that word processors are slowly taking an interest in reference management. Word 2007 features a reference manager, although it is really primitive and not usable for serious academic use. OpenOffice has been behind ODF for a while. if ODF becomes a de-facto standard, we may not need to rely on PDF. And ODF is XML, so adding different fields that can be mined by reference managers shouldn’t be hard. ODF is overseen by the Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards (OASIS). That way, the metadata is no longer an extension of the document: the entire document could be parsed and each component could contribute in its indexing. This would make easy to do what citeSeer is trying to do ‘the hard way’ (parsing author, title, etc out of the papers that we academic have in our homepages, and making them available and searchable).
The need is there. I think the company/University dept. that gets this right will have a winner. For example, the Zotero forums express this need as follows:
(post by CuriousGeorge) Here is what I would like to do ideally:
1. Begin literature review on new topic using databases like JSTOR, Proquest, and Web of Science.
2. Use Zotero’s current “folder” icon in address bar to select articles of interest.
3. Zotero downloads citation information (this already works well), abstract (this often works), and the associated PDF file (with this option enabled in Zotero preferences, it currently works well in JSTOR but not other databases like Proquest).
4. Zotero stores all PDFs in one folder and automatically renames the PDFs based on the associated citation information in the format “Author, Year, Article Title.pdf” (or customized format selected by user).
5. PDFs are read in the browser window and notes are taken in the associated Zotero entry.
6. Zotero allows search in any combination of citation information, abstract/notes, and full text of website/PDF snapshots (stored locally).
7. Lit Review is built by creating new notes that synthesize various articles (these notes take advantage of the “related” option in Zotero to link back to the associated references).
8. The lit review notes and “related” citations are exported to a word processor.
9. The word processor is dynamically linked to the Zotero database for adding new citations and for searching the Zotero database for quotes/notes.
