[Taxacom] Questions re sharing bibliographic resources

[Roderic Page]

I wonder whether this is another case of our community reinventing the  
wheel?

Shared bibliographies are emerging on the web. Tools like CiteULike  
and Connotea have been around for a while, and there are newcomers  
such as http://www.mendeley.com/ and http://www.zotero.org/ . Some  
these efforts are tried and tested, and some have attracted  
significant support (e.g., http://www.mendeley.com/blog/2009/02/mendeley-raises-2-million-techcrunch-reports-were-happy-as-clams/ 
  ).

I've not played with Mendely much, but it's got $US 2M in funding,  
supports storage and sharing of PDFs, and my post doc is a big fan (http://evo-karma.blogspot.com/2009/02/mendeley.html 
).

Might it not be a better strategy to make use of existing tools  
(supported by a much larger community), rather than develop our own?  
Bibliographic management is such a generic task that it seems crazy to  
succumb to the "not invented here" syndrome.

Regards

Rod


On 28 Feb 2009, at 15:44, Mary Barkworth wrote:

> I am looking for a way to share references with others working on the
> same groups as me. There must be free, open source software out there
> than can be used for this purpose - and people who can comment, on or
> off line, about its pluses and minuses. Please, would you share you
> knowledge. I have been looking at Connotea and it seems to be designed
> for recent publications - those that are on the web. I am looking for
> something, and perhaps Connotea is it, that can also be used for
> publications without a doi. Why the interest?
>
> 1)      To save the time that is currently spent by many people, each
> recording citations that someone else has already saved in one  
> format or
> another.
>
> 2)      It would be a great way for those starting work on a group to
> find out about relevant publications, including old publications.
> Clearly links to a web-accessible version would be great, but  
> knowing a
> publication exists is an important step forward.
>
> 3)      It would be a way that people could draw attention to their
> publications, including those that are published in journals that are
> not widely distributed or are in a language other than English
> (providing a title in English as well as the original language would  
> be
> helpful).
>
>
>
> Ideally, I would like to be able to link to the cited references and/ 
> or
> the underlying article in building web pages. For those working on
> grasses, the references cited in the Flora of North America volumes
> online at http://utc.usu.edu/grassbib.html  It also contains some
> additional references. It was posted from Endnote, contains some
> duplicates and many special characters did not survive the migration.
> Rather than spend time editing it, I would like to build a more open
> resource, one that anyone (or possibly members of a group) can edit
> and/or post or link to.
>
>
>
> Mary
>
>
>
>
>
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---------------------------------------------------------
Roderic Page
Professor of Taxonomy
DEEB, FBLS
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University of Glasgow
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