Scopus - WoS

I am not even sure were to begin this post. Part of me is very happy that I have learned a crazy new set of technological skills during the Scopus-WoS assignment. Exporting, importing, ref sharing - all cool tools. But part is me is frustrated because of the feeling of having to go it alone with so little direction. I thank the power of the cohort with their advice and help in getting me through the work!

RefShare Rocks!

Man, am I jealous of the undergrads of today. The worst part about every undergraduate paper that I had to write was the bibliography, hands-down. I would always have references written on scraps of paper and then I would spend hours finding the scraps, assembling them, and trying to figure out the proper format. Sheer agony. Playing around with RefShare this week was an eye-opening experience into the wonders of information management tools. Gosh, it just makes managing your references so clean and easy. It stinks though that I won't be able to use it much as I am at the end of my graduate school career (only 6 classes to go). Ah, so it goes.

And the winner is...

Zotero! What a cool way of aggregating a set of references. I absolutely love its sensing function and how you simply click on an icon in the address bar to "grab" a reference. All in all, I thought del.icio.us was great for bookmarking the stuff you come across during typical Internet surfing and that Zotero is great in the scholarly citation arena. Would I use Connotea in the future? That remains to be seen. I thought it was kind of "clunky". Regardless, using these applications was a great lesson on the importance of information management and an eye-opening experience about the value of some of the newer web 2.0 technologies.

del.icio.us vs. Connotea

So I am back in bookmarking mode as I try to pick up the pieces of where I left off prior to my horrific computer crash. I am totally digging bookmarking with del.icio.us. It is fun, easy, relatively brainless - basically right up my alley. Connotea is ... well, let's just say it is more of a challenge. I am sure though that I would appreciate it more if I was trying to manage a boatload of references. It probably doesn't help that I tried to bookmark 40 things using Connotea in a single afternoon (a desperate attempt to catch up with my classmates). It will be interesting to see now how Zotero stacks up against these two.

Back in Business

Wow - suffering through a computer crash is the most stressful thing ever. It has literally been a two week process to get my computer diagnosed, buy a new one, take back new one because of faulty drive, buy a 2nd new one (yes, you read that right), recover old files and pictures, and re-download needed applications/programs, etc. I am officially back in business, so to speak, and plan to spend the next few weeks working diligently to catch up in this class. Oh and big props for the boys at Geek Squad who recovered all of my files and pictures for a mere $99 - a bargain considering I was actually stupid enough to not have back-up copies.