CPD 23: THING 14

WOW! I wish I had had one of these reference management systems when I was going to grad school. But in my time, the Selectric typewriter, which would erase mistakes and even recall a few lines of text,was as far as we went. Imagine what I could have done with the countless hours I spent agonizing over bibliographic form! But then too, less was expected because access to resources was more limited.

When I experimented with Zotero, I was reminded of a virtual file cabinet system, all ready to rearrange. Then I ruefully thought of my free lance paper filesin my home office, where all my writing is tucked neatly into folders, but with no cross referencing. Should I reconvert everything or just have a before and after system?

Mendeley sounded like extreme overkill for my situation plus I really don't need to or want to share extensively with others. It's not like I am doing scientific research. And speaking of research, is so much sharing dangerous? How much do you really want others to know about your work with the carrot of the Nobel Prize hanging above your computer?

Moving right along...I liked the idea that with CiteULike you could upload your pdfs and access them from any computer. I have sometimes emailed myself in-process documents so I will be able to open them on a different computer. THat works fine, but only if you remember to email the pdfs!

As a Children's Librarian, I really wouldn't have need for any of these tools in the course of my workday, but they would definitely be helpful if I were writing an extensive article for publication.
laura