12/29/10 12/29/10

Finding Alternatives to Delicious

Delicious, an excellent bookmarking service currently owned by Yahoo!, is an important part of my research process. While in the collecting phase, I use Delicious to tag interesting websites and documents that I need to go back and review at a later date. This allows me to use either Google or Google Scholar to rapidly search and tag documents without getting to engrossed in the details of individual articles.

To illustrate how powerful Delicious tags can be, here are a few lists I have created over the last couple of years as I researched various topics:

Adding sites to Delicious is a simple keystroke in Firefox [Ctrl-D]. The user interface allows you to quickly tag the page, make a note about its significance (or copy a paragraph from the page to jog your memory), even share your bookmark via Twitter.

Unfortunately, Yahoo announced earlier this month their intention to sell Delicious. [The original buzz on the blogosphere was that Delicious was simply going to go away. Fortunately, this proved to be a false rumor.]

Alternatives to Delicious

Still, this realization that a critical part of my workflow is facing an uncertain future led me on a quest for a potential replacement. Here are the prospects as of today:

Diigo. Diigo is a mature social bookmarking, highlighting, note-taking, collaboration site that performs many of the same functions as Delicious. Seizing on the opportunity to capture new users looking for a replacement for Delicious, Diigo wisely provides a “Transition from Delicious to Diigo – Instruction & FAQ” page. Diigo is free.
Evernote. I am a big fan of Evernote and use this application on Windows, Mac OS, iPad, and Android platforms. Evernote is a great archive for all of your digital documents. It is the critical part of my paperless workflow. As much as I like Evernote, I don’t see it as a viable replacement for Delicious. One of the best features of Delicious is its simplicity, and in my opinion, Evernote would add levels of complexity that would defeat the purpose of rapid collection of online resources. Like Diigo, Evernote provides a simple process on their blog to make the transition from Delicious to Evernote. Evernote has both a paid and free version, and the free version is more than adequate for my needs.
Google Bookmarks. With Google sitting as king of the hill when it comes to search engines, it only makes sense that Google Bookmarks would be a viable alternative to Delicious. Tagging sites with Google Bookmarks can be as simple as clicking on the little star next to your search results. Google Bookmarks allows users to create and share lists, and plays well with other Google services like Google Maps, Gmail, Docs, etc.. Unfortunately, Google doesn’t provide instructions on making the transition from Delicious, although there are several recent articles on the web. Google Bookmarks is free.
Historious. I’m not familiar with Historious, but it appears to offer many of the features available through Delicious. Unfortunately (for me) this service is not free, and that knocks it out of contention. (You can get a free account that allows up to 300 bookmarks. The paid account is $19.95 per year and gives unlimited access to the service.)
Pinboard. The final contender in today’s roundup of Delicious replacements is Pinboard. As with Historious, I am not personally familiar with Pinboard, although it does receive some decent reviews. Pinboard provides a side-by-side comparison with Delicious if you need some help making a decision. Like Historious, there is a charge to use this service, so that knocks it out of contention for me.

I will update you on the final results of my search to find a good alternative to Delicious. Do you have recommendations as alternatives to Delicious?

3/5/09 3/5/09

Introduction to Zotero

Below is a brief introduction to Zotero I prepared for my “Writing a Research Paper" Seminar at the University of Northern Iowa. Starting this semester, I am going to explore Zotero as a research tool.

Zotero [zoh-TAIR-oh] is a free, easy-to-use Firefox extension to help you collect, manage, and cite your research sources. It lives right where you do your work—in the web browser itself.

Download and Install Zotero

Currently there are two versions of Zotero offered for download: Zotero 1.0 and Zotero 1.5 Beta. Zotero 1.5 Beta offers many new and exciting features, but it is still undergoing active development and may cause minor problems for some users as detailed below.

Syncing and backup of Zotero libraries
Automatic detection of PDF metadata
Rich-text notes
Automatic detection and support for proxy servers
Trash can with restore item functionality
Support for Endnote® export styles

Word Processor Compatibility

	Zotero 1.0	Zotero 1.5
Word 2003 (Win)	Compatible	Compatible
Word 2007 (Win)	Compatible	Compatible
Word 2004 (Mac)	Compatible	Compatible
Word 2008 (Mac)	Not Compatible	Compatible
OpenOffice 2.4	Compatible	Compatible
OpenOffice 3.0	Compatible	Compatible

Zotero 1.5 Beta has already been tested by thousands of users over the past 8 months, and we are confident that it is ready for widespread use. We have also added additional automated functionality to Zotero 1.5 Beta to protect data against loss. However, we are still actively adding features to Zotero's synchronization functionality, and there is a small risk of disruption in your user experience. If you plan to use Zotero 1.5 Beta, we strongly encourage you to back up your data regularly. If this message scares you even a tiny bit, please continue to use Zotero 1.0 for the immediate time being.

Zotero Quick Start Guide

For a quick overview of Zotero, follow the link above to the Quick Start Guide or download the pdf.

quick_start_guide.pdf

Zotero Screencast Tutorials

In an effort to make Zotero as user friendly as possible we have developed these screencasts demonstrating many of the basic functions of Zotero. Click on any of the images to watch screencasts detailing the features named below. Special thanks to Steve Bailey from CU-Boulder for preparing the introductory demo.

Zotero Compatible Sites

Zotero will automatically work with many sites not listed here; the best way to find out if Zotero works is to give it a try! If you find a site that works with Zotero but does not appear in the list below, please let us know by sending an email to [email protected].

12 must know Zotero tips and techniques

by Mark Dingemanse
Zotero is getting better and better. In a while, version 1.5 will bring synchronization, online backup of your library, +1100 CSL citation styles, and PDF metadata extraction (for the daring, a sync preview version is available). But even in its current incarnation Zotero is easily one of the best bibliographic managers out there. Here are twelve tips and tricks that help you to get the most out of it.

Zotero Links

Zotero Bookmarks

I am eller0001 on Delicious
Add me to your network

2/16/09 2/16/09

To Cite or Not to Cite: Plagiarism in the Digital Age

Recently, in one of my grad classes at the University of Northern Iowa I had a little fun with the age-old question of whether or not to cite a source. I thought I would share it with you.

To cite or not to cite, that is the age-old question.

Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth in this university a new method of citation, conceived in a library, and dedicated to the proposition that all references are created equal.

As I often tell people, let the word go forth that the torch has passed to a new generation of graduate students who are willing to pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, cite any source in order to assure the survival of and success of academic pursuit.

So, let me encourage you, ask not what references you should cite, cite which references you use.

After all,

Two books diverged in a yellow library
And sorry I could not cite both
And be one student, long I stood
And read down one as far as I could

To where it bored me with the statistics
Then I took the other volume just as fair
And having perhaps the better claim
Because it was shiny and wanted wear

Though for that, the passing there
Had worn them about the same.
And both that morning equally lay
On shelves no student had trodden back

Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet, knowing how way leads unto way
I doubted if ever I should come back
I shall be telling this with a citation

Somewhere ages and ages hence
Two books diverged in a yellow library
And I took the one less read
And that has made all the difference.

I hope you see the humor in this. I need to ask forgiveness to the following for the adaptation of their famous quotes: William Shakespeare, Abraham Lincoln, John F. Kennedy, and Robert Frost.

Plagiarism Goes Digital

When I was a high school and an undergraduate student in the 1980s, all of my research was completed in a library using hardcopy books and journals. Most references were copied onto 3x5 cards by hand. By it’s very nature, this made it difficult to plagiarize without fully knowing you were plagiarizing.

Unfortunately, in the age of the Internet, a lot of research is digital, and it is easy to cut and paste references. It’s simply too easy for students to plagiarize. This requires extra diligence on the part of the student to ensure careful citation or sources.

Fact Checking Goes Digital

One solution for students who question whether or not they need to cite is a service called “TurnItIn.com.” TurnItIn.com is a service schools and academic institutions can subscribe to that gives teachers access to a large and growing database of content. All a teacher needs to do is enter in a few passages from a student’s paper and TurnItIn will tell the teacher if it has been lifted from another source. Pretty neat!

TurnItIn also has a service for students that will “fact check” their papers for proper citation. It’s called WriteCheck, and here’s a brief description from TurnItIn’s web site:

WriteCheck compares every paper to a massive database of content from over 10,000 major newspapers, magazines, scholarly journals and books as well as a database of over 11.5 billion current and archived pages of web content, and more than 65 million previously-submitted student papers

There is a small fee for the service, but it may save a student a lot of embarrassment (or worse) if there are areas of his/her paper that are quoted without proper citation.

You can view a demo of WriteCheck by clicking here.

Here are some additional resources to help you answer the “to cite or not to cite” question:

“Understanding Plagiarism” created by Indiana University’s School of Education.
The Plagiarism Learning Center created by TurnItIn.com.