Thing 14: Reference Management Systems

Thing 14 of cpd23 is all about reference management systems. Working in a corporate library and having no desire to write an essay or article at the moment, I wasn't sure how much use this thing would be. I was however keen to explore the suggested free systems Zotero, Mendeley and CiteULike as I think it's important to have an understanding of what tools are out there - you never know what the future holds. I know these types of tools develop and change rapidly, but this thing has provided me with time to at least see what they can do now and has reminded me that such tools exist.

Zotero

Zotero is an open source product that is a plugin for Firefox. You can save articles, PDFs etc. using an icon in your browsers address bar. Saved items are then added to your library and automatically referenced. You can easily access your library at anytime using a tab at the bottom of your browser.



I liked the fact that Zotero not only saves the article or actual PDF, but also captures a snapshot of the webpage, although the formatting often goes a bit wierd. The references seem fairly complete, although you can edit them if need be and you can add notes and annotations to your saved documents. This is however the point I gave up. I didn't find Zotero very intuitive to use (the recommended demo was needed) and Firefox isn't my preferred browser. I therefore didn't have the will to download the Word Processor plugin that would allow me to create a bibliography in Microsoft Word.

Zotero was interesting to play with, but I found Mendeley easier to use as a reference tool.

Mendeley

Unlike Zotero, Mendeley is a desktop tool, although you can also access a web version, making it possible for me to use this in work. It's easy to add documents, you can even upload whole folders and set up watched folders whereby newly saved files are automatically added to your Mendeley library. Like Zotero documents are automatically referenced and you can edit them if you need to. A nice feature is that you can search Mendeley's crowd-sourced research catalogue for papers. Whilst many results are only citations, you can search for open access articles.

Again you can add notes and annotations, however with Mendeley you can print your documents with your scribbles.



I had a quick go at creating a document adding references and then creating a bibliography. It's easy to do and you can change the style of referencing at a click of a button.

The one thing I wasn't able to do was install the Web importer which I think would make Mendeley much more useful. I'm having problems with my PC - it only works in safe mode, so I'm guessing the problem is me rather than Mendeley. 

CiteULike

I'm afraid CiteULike will have to wait until another day. I'll post my thoughts when I get round to trying it out. 


How useful are these tools?

I'm not sure. In my current role I have very little use for referencing tools, although I will try searching Mendeley papers next time I'm asked to look for scholarly type articles. As part of my Chartership I am looking to up my professional reading and Mendeley might be a good way of keeping it all in one place.

On the flip side I'm not sure I would blindly trust either of the tools I've tried if I were writing anything of importance. I can imagine having to do a bit of manual editing once your references/bibliography have been created, but overall I can see them saving time.

In an academic setting there are quite a few paid for services that vie for attention. I'd be interested to know how the free tools compare with the likes of Endnote, Reference Manager, RefWorks and  Papers?