Yesterday a representative from Zotero, Trevor Owens, gave a demo to our law school faculty. To say that they were impressed would be an understatement - there were actual squeals of delight.

Zotero is a free, easy-to-use Firefox extension to help you collect, manage, and cite your research sources. I've know about it for a while (in fact I posted about it last year) but until this week, I had no idea how powerful it is.

It's not just a free version of RefWorks or EndNote which help you capture citations and create bibliographies. Zotero does that, but also much more: it manages the entire research and writing process.

For example, say you're viewing a journal article in HeinOnline. If you look up in the Firefox address bar, you'll see a little paper icon. When you click on the icon, Zotero will capture the full citation information. BUT--and here's the kicker--you can also download the entire PDF article which will attach itself to the citation information.

Now imagine doing this a hundred times over, and not just with articles but with all kinds of documents - web pages, books, gov docs, images, audio, video, etc. Then add content from your own desktop - word files, PDFs, MP3s, PPT files, etc. You can attach pretty much any kind of file to a citation.

Then organize it all into folders (more like iTunes playlists than folders actually) for different projects. And the really cool part is that you can keyword search it all - even the attached articles, word files, web pages, etc. Wow!

But wait - there's more! When you're ready to sit down and write, up steps the Zotero MS Word add on which automatically creates citations for you in your choice of citation style - INCLUDING BLUEBOOK! (The Bluebook style is still in beta, but neither EndNote or RefWorks offer Bluebook at all) Or, if you don't use MS Word, you can simply drag the citation from your Zotero library into any document (WordPerfect, Google Docs, email, etc.) and it will paste in the correctly formatted citation.

Just amazing - Zotero is an absolute must have for anyone who writes. For more information, watch this short video or read the informational flyer.

Posted by Bonnie Shucha at 9:17 AM to Tools | Permalink | Comments(0)

I'm pleased to announced that the entire run of the University of Wisconsin Law School's alumni newsletter, The Gargoyle, has been digitized and is freely available on our Web site. The collection spans from volume 1 (1969) to the present.

The digitization project was organized by the UW Law Library in collaboration with Technology Services. It was graciously funded by the Benchers Society.

The collection is currently browse-able by issue and article title. A search box will be added soon.

Posted by Bonnie Shucha at 4:05 PM to UW Law School | Permalink | Comments(0)

Must be the week for new interfaces - this time its a new look for del.icio.us - or make that Delicious (hold the periods). Delicious is a social bookmarking web service for storing, sharing, and discovering web bookmarks.

Here's a look at my list of the bookmarks I've tagged PhotosImages in Delicious:

According to the Delicious blog

We've updated the user interface to improve usability and add a few often-requested features (such as selectable detail levels and alphabetical sorting of bookmarks). Our goal has been to keep the new design similar in spirit to the old one, so all of you veterans should be able to jump in without any confusion. At the same time, we're hoping that newcomers to Delicious will find it easier to learn.

Check out all the changes, including navigation, tag bar, bookmarks, side bar and action box, on the What's New page. Or, watch a short movie which visually depicts the changes.

Behind the scenes, Delicious has also improved the speed and search capabilities according to the blog.

Posted by Bonnie Shucha at 8:35 AM to Data & Databases | Permalink | Comments(0)

It appears that SSRN (Social Science Research Network) has made some interface improvements to its author and article pages. Very nice. For those that may not be familiar with it, SSRN is an open access repository of scholarly papers.

Article page:

Notice the large download buttons at the top of the article page. They appear when you "Choose Download Location" link. This is a nice improvement since it wasn't entirely clear how to download on the old format. If you click on the "Share" link at the top, you'll see links to save/share the url on Digg, Del.icio.us, etc. At the bottom of the page, you have the option to export the cite to EndNote, BibTeX and RefMan. That may or may not be new, but I've never noticed it.

Author page:

The author page also has some nice options. At the very top, notice the RSS feed which will notify you of all new papers and revisions by that author. (This isn't new, but it's worth repeating.)

In the listing of articles, statistics to number of downloads and citations appear on the right. In the actions bar across the top, you can email or export citations to selected articles in the list. You can also choose to view or hide abstracts in the article list.

Posted by Bonnie Shucha at 9:10 AM to Data & Databases | Permalink | Comments(0)

A new service called Slydial connects you directly to to someone's mobile voicemail - without ever having the phone ring. Sneaky.

Here's how it works:

1. Dial 267-SLYDIAL (267-759-3425) from any landline or mobile phone.
   (It doesn't work if you have caller id blocked on your phone)
   
2. At the voice prompt, enter the U.S. mobile phone number of the person you want to slydial.
   
3. After a brief ad, you will be directly connected to their voicemail.

I tried this out on my husband's cell phone and it really works. It put me right in his voicemail with no indication that I'd done anything differently. I can think of a few good uses for this. Can you? Here are some from Slydial.

Posted by Bonnie Shucha at 3:58 PM to Communication | Permalink | Comments(0)

Genie Tyburski has announced that she's closing down The Virtual Chase. Wow - the end of an era.

I will take down the site gradually over the next several months unless I find someone willing to archive it or continue its development. I anticipate that the site will be completely offline by no later than May 2009 (and quite possibly, sooner) except in the event of a new owner.

Posted by Bonnie Shucha at 3:54 PM to Research Strategies | Permalink | Comments(0)

Criminal Searches is a new site that allows you to do just what its name implies - run a criminal history check on specific people or generally for a geographic area.

From an AP story:

Created by the folks behind PeopleFinders.com, the new site crunches monthly government data down to the state and county level, says Bryce Lane, president and chief operating officer of PeopleFinders.com.

"What we're really good at is establishing connections across all these different data sets, linking it back to a particular person," Lane said, acknowledging, however, that some data might be missing. The company also doesn't tap into federal crime data.

The Neighborhood Watch feature lets you focus your search by address or ZIP code. You can also search by a person's name or specific home address, and there's a separate search with a detailed map of registered sex offenders.

All I can say is WOW. I ran a general check of my street (I live in small town USA) and was completely shocked by the number of people listed - and all overlayed on a Google map of my neighborhood. Criminal Searches also includes an legend of the type of crime for which an individual was charged. See, for example, this map of the UW Madison campus area.

Not surprisingly, some are questioning the product.

Yet, if a neighbor was not convicted and is otherwise innocent this may not matter to CriminalSearches.com. If you land on the list, prepare to save money on Halloween candy and rest assured you'll have a less cluttered social calender -- as word moves along about the free criminal background search website.

Posted by Bonnie Shucha at 12:59 PM to Data & Databases | Permalink | Comments(0)