I work in a public library which is next door to an expanding university campus and this has resulted in increasing numbers of students using our services. Maintaining an awareness of online referencing tools
should enable me to better serve this group. Once again, thank-you CPD23.
I chose to focus on Mendeley and Cite U Like for this weeks review. I realised from the outset that it would involve a bit of a time investment and might be complicated. Unfortunately, I'm not a whizz with new technology and I expect to learn by trial and error.
Although I didn't explore Zotero, I found a useful screencast on YouTube (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-55EyEWT61U) which covers the basic features.
According to product comparison and reviews: Mendeley (http://www.mendeley.com/) tops the list for referencing software. I found using it be reasonably straightforward, partly as a result of the excellent help pages. The interface is easy on the eye and above all easy to navigate. I experienced a few problems with the 'Import Web Pages' feature: my pop-up settings were the culprit. However, I've now added a few PDFs and managed to customise the styles and settings. I'll explore this a bit more later.
I can see why Cite U Like (http://www.citeulike.org/) could be named 'the Delcious for academics'. The main benefit is that you can access the service from any web browser - no timeconsuming software downloads! Furthermore, I found the CiteGeist feature (http://www.citeulike.org/citegeist?days=7) potentially useful for current awareness. This feature gives you a list of the most popular, current journal articles being read and circulated. I managed to retrieve this detailed report on Web 2.0 risks/benefits and libraries: http://opus.bath.ac.uk/15260/3/author-version.pdf
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