The good news is that Zotero has always been an awesome, free, and open-source reference manager for research.  It is a Firefox browser add on that allows one to save metadata, files, links, and notes about information that you find anywhere on the web.  For the uninitiated, I highly recommend watching the introduction video and trying it next time you’re compiling information for a research project.

The great news is that the beta version of Zotero just got even better, because now you can sign up for an account on zotero.org and sync your Zotero library between more than one computer. I no longer have to keep my home research and my work research separate.  I can work on any project from any computer.  Needless to say, I’m very excited!

To learn more about getting started with Zotero, check out the Quick Start Guide which includes tours, demos, illustrations and instructions.

To get the new syncing functionality, visit the Zotero home page using the Firefox browser and be sure to click on the “Try out Beta 1.5″ button.  Use the export function in settings to backup your library before your first sync.  The process was seamless for me, but it is still a beta project, so you want to be safe rather than sorry. (For Internet Explorer users who have never heard of Firefox:  Firefox is an open-source, free internet browser that allows users to extend its functionality with neat addons.  You can learn more at their homepage.)

As always, USA people should feel free to contact me if you want help setting up or using Zotero or installing the new beta.

How to store information in Zotero

I’ve never been big on mind mapping, or even really understood what it is when it comes to it, but I new I needed a way to organize the web page that would let me see its structure and quickly assess what needed to be done.  After trying in a spreadsheet, I thought about a mind map, and found this pretty useful tool called MindMeister.  I was not planning on posting about it, but after being asked for the link by two people who wandered through the office, I thought it might be good to go ahead and put it out there.

According to Wikipedia, a mindmap is “a diagram used to represent words, ideas, tasks, or other items linked to and arranged radially around a central key word or idea. It is used to generate, visualize, structure, and classify ideas, and as an aid in study, organization, problem solving, decision making, and writing.”  I’m pretty sure I’m not using the tool exactly like it’s intended, but it has given me a way to visually map out my plan for the website and apply icons that give me a quick view of whatever I like.  For instance, I’ve assigned icons next to page titles to indicate how far along they are in development, whether they have an analog on the old site, whether they are part of our site or if they are an outside link, if they link back easily to us, and if they are form-based.  I can take a pretty quick survey of red x’s and see which way I need to be going in the development.

MindMeister is free on the web and allows you to share and collaborate with others on your mindmaps.  The only problem that I’ve had with it so far is that it tends to slow down if left open in a window for a long time, but if you back out to the home page and come back, it’s as good as new.  Also, there is no save button, it saves changes as you go, which while useful, makes me nervous when I leave, but I haven’t lost any data yet, either.

My use is below.  As always, let me know if I can help or if you know of any great uses for this in your work.

This one is only for those of us using the Firefox Browser.  (For those who aren’t, it’s an Internet Explorer alternative, it’s on your computer, and it’s great, especially because it can help you do things like this.)  Book Burro is a Firefox extension for book lovers.  Whenever Book Burro senses that you are on a page about a book, a little yellow box pops up telling you the price for that book on several online bookstores, as well as, its location in the libraries closest to you.  I’ve only noticed the yellow box pop-up on its own when I do Amazon searches, but that’s not a problem, because if it doesn’t pop up, you simply select the ISBN number, right click and choose “Book Burro Search” from the menu. To install it,  go to the Book Burro home page, and click install.  Restart your browser when it prompts you.  When your browser opens, go to tools>add-ons select Book Burro, then preferences. Watch the video below to see me go through the process.  Under the “WorldCat” tab, type in your zip code so that it knows the nearest libraries to you.  Then click ok, and you should be set.  You can also watch a video of the process. As always, if you’d like any help, let me know.

I recently discovered Alltop, which is a great site for looking at the latest posts on all of the most popular websites and blogs for any given area. For instance, you can find out all the news this week about health, or nursing, or branding, or books, or music, or gardening, or photography, or futurism (yes, futurism), or one of many other topics.  Not only is it a great way to get the latest news about your favorite hobby or professional inquiry, it’s an easy way to find out about all the best websites or blogs in your area of interest.  I’ve enjoyed checking out many of the different areas and found some new blogs to subscribe to myself, so I thought you all might, as well.  Enjoy!

A lot of people around the library already use delicious.com, but some haven’t heard about it yet, and since it got a makeover today, I thought it would be a good time to talk up a great service. Delicious.com (formerly del.icio.us) is a great way to save your bookmarks online so you can get to them from anywhere and organize them with tags (labels) for quick retrieval.  Sharing links with other people who use the service is also incredibly easy.  As useual, there’s a common craft video available that explains social bookmarking in a very easy-to-understand way, so I’ll post the video and then explain about some of the ways that you can use it to connect to the rest of us in the library.

There’s been a bit of a change in the look since that video, but the service still operates in the same way and makes it easy to get to the websites that you save from anywhere.  Delicious also allows you to create a network of friends and share links with them on the fly.  You can see my bookmarks at http://delicious.com/alwright1 and add me to your network.  Judy and Beverly also have delicious accounts that I’m sure they wuld be glad to share with you.

Delicious also creates RSS feeds for every tag allowing them to be used in a number of ways.  For example, the “Useful Links” area in the right sidebar of this blog is updated every time someone tags a delicious post with “ttif” (for this thing I found).  So when I think that something might be useful to everyone, I tag them ttif and they appear here. If you did the same, they would show in the sidebar here, too.  Someone could also choose to grab the RSS feed for that tag and be alerted in their RSS reader everytime someone tagged a new website with ttif.  You can also use a specific person’s tags, so I subscribe to Judy’s “technology” tags with my RSS reader, and now anytime she tags something with the word “technology,” I find out about it.  As always, if you would like me to help you set up a delicious account or would like to know more about it.  Let me know.

Know Your Stuff Home Inventory Softwware

This free download isn’t necessarily useful for our work here, but as we live on the Gulf Coast in the middle of hurricane season, I thought I would mention it.  Know Your Stuff Home Inventory software makes it easy to keep an inventory of your belongings.  It provides wizards, ways to import photos and videos, and allows you to print out a copy or burn a copy to CD and store the copy in a safe place.  (I don’t know if there are options for saving electronically outside of using their paid storage service, but one could always scan the print out to pdf and store it online.)  This software is provided by the Insurance Information Institute.  You can get more information, get help, and watch a video of the process at the Know Your Stuff website.

via Lifehacker

WhenIsGood is a site that easily allows you to collect information about the best time for many people to meet.  You just choose all of the available times and then they mark the ones that are good for them as well.  In the end, you can see which times every person (or the most people) are available.

Slideshare.net is a way to share slide presentations online.  The library has a profile, and a few of our presentations have been uploaded.  The site has an awesome community.  People from many professions upload informative and fun presentations all the time.  It also allows for the embedding of presentations on websites like we do on our EBM Rotation Site or like I do below.  If you would like to participate, let me know, and I can either send you our username and password, or you can just send your powerpoints to me, and I’ll take care of the rest.  This service makes one’s presentation slides available to anyone at any time so you can share them with anyone on the fly.  It also serves as an archive and a service to others looking for information about the things in which we’re interested.

Not everyone has heard about or likes to use RSS to get their news. For those who prefer to get their information in their email like a good ole listserv, there is SendMeRSS.com. SendMeRSS allows one to get blogs, news, or other website updates in the form of email, instead of going to a separate reader or homepage to learn about new posts.  I don’t mind sending out email updates about the blog to those who ask for them, but I thought this might be a good tool for that same group in case they come across other blogs or websites with which they would like to keep up.

For those who don’t know about RSS yet, here’s a video on the concept.  I would be glad to teach anyone who is interested in RSS to use it and help them get started anytime.  It’s one of my favorite technologies out there today, and I try to tell people about it whenever I can.

Ok, are you ever on chat reference, or on the phone, or emailing with a patron, and you just can’t seem to understand one another? Maybe they aren’t starting from the databases and resources page, or they don’t understand that you are guiding them through searching on the Advanced Search features and they are looking at the Basic Search box. Whatever the reason, it would be so much easier if they could see.

Jing is a great way to take care of this problem so that you can easily show them what you mean. It can create a screen capture (image) or a screencast (movie) and upload it in seconds, providing you with a link to send to them over chat or email that will show them exactly what you just did. Maybe the video will do a better job of explaining:

There’s also another short video here, in case you’d like to see it explained a little differently. There’s also a lot of information about getting started with Jing on their website.

Anyone who wants some training in how to use it, just let me know. I’m also happy to help anyone set it up on their own computers with approval from systems, as always.