| Tracy Kent, t.k.kent@bham.ac.uk
Many readers of this column find the evaluation
template of reference software a useful tool for comparing
the features of a number of packages at a glance. The best-known
of these is now in its 12th updated version,
and can be found at http://www.burioni.it/forum/ors-bfs/text/index.html.
For each of the major packages, the evaluation template considers
features such database structure, searching capabilities,
database integrity features such as thesaurus or term lists,
outputting options for repurposing the references and how
useful the documentation is.
Social Bookmarking
Social Bookmarking software is becoming
quite prolific, and there are many tools out there which support
such a service. These include academic-type services such
as CiteULike (http://www.citeulike.org). which provides
a service to help share, store and organise academic papers.
The service extracts the required reference details. Usefully,
for some articles there are links to related articles, which
use a Java program to display linked references like this,
so that the service moves from being just a bookmarking service
to resource discovery. The service also provides a grouping
or networking service for users based on particular subjects.
CiteULike also lets you add a DOI (Document Object Identifier)
to the article provided you are logged in and you have the
article in your collection. References can be exported direct
to Endnote or BibTex.:
Related records in CiteULike:
citing article in centre
CourseCafé (http://www.coursecafe.com).
This is a book marking service specifically designed for students,
which provides tags and saves Web content related to course
work and homework topics. Set up by recent graduates “who
still have the scars to show from the countless number of
hours spent on the Web”!
ClipMarks http://clipmarks.com.
With this service, you simply click on the item or, more usefully
perhaps, part of the item you actually want and then save.
Just hope you save enough to be useful!
Others seem to invent their own language
– such as “to Riff” which is to provide a rant or rave about
something! The riff website seems to include lots of tagged
references – sometimes with links to purchase the aforementioned
reference but with a social bent. To contribute simply go
to Riffs at http://www.riffs.com/.
My Web2 (http://myweb2.search.yahoo.com)
and My Stuff (http://mystuff.ask.com).
MyWeb2 is a service from Yahoo that also provides, free at
the moment, the option to save and share book marks similar
to the My Stuff pages via the Ask.com service (formerly Ask
Jeeves), which also offers a web archiving feature. In the
case of My Stuff, however, it provides a link back to the
latest version of the page you searched, rather than the actual
page you archived. Both only allow saving of results from
within the search engines attached, unless you have downloaded
the appropriate tool bar – this would log you into the service
before saving the results.
Onfolio (http://www.onfolio.com)
allows for bookmarks to be stored but also prompts for users
to describe and add comments and for managing all electronic
documents. You can then synchronise your references with Endnote.
Usefully Onfolio also allows you to manage RSS feeds and to
send references to your blog. Further you can save emails
into the software for repurposing which is an added feature
and the search facility is pretty good. It does integrate
into the tool bar.
Finally Technorati (http://www.technorati.com/) performs searches
on blogs that are often (though not always) more up to date
than Web pages. It tracks materials from some of the social
bookmarking services such as del.icio.us or furl, and the
pages are displayed with a tag cloud (a visual description
of content) to give a representative view. The service also
provides a watch list based on your search terms, to keep
track of blogs in your area. Go on, give it a try!
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