Thing 6

I had previously put a Netvibes site together to collate current awareness from a variety of sources. However it wasn't well used despite lots of publicity. My users commented that they didn't have the time or didn't remember to visit another website and wanted the information to land in their inboxes. Not sure if you can sign up to alerts on Netvibes that inform of new content when its added, but it's something I could explore. Again though if the alerts rely on users signing up then it's something that won't happen.

It's been great exploring personal pages, twitter, delicious, using bookmarks and tags. These tools are great on their own but bring them together and the information can be delivered right to your fingertips. A program like Netvibes makes this easy and possible and brings everything together in one place.

This does have great potential for the librarian responsible for staying up to date, but then it's the question of how  to share and disseminate that information to patrons that want everything done for them.

For the willing and IT savvy library users then these tools can be recommended to help them manage their information efficiently. For the savvy ones who might use these services already it is a simple case of them subscribing to the library content.

As this is the last thing,  I would like to say what an interesting few weeks it has been. Old questions have been answered and some new ones generated. I have re-explored some tools and discovered new ones. I will certainly be looking to use some the tools in the future.

Thing 5 Referencing

I really liked the Zotero website they provided step by step video tutorials for their product. The videos were easy to follow. Mendeley were not so open their video was just for promotion and the register and download now button was everywhere. This made it feel like the pressured sell, whereas Zotero made all their information readily available for perusal.

I did find a useful comparison table on Mendeley, the is given below:

http://www.mendeley.com/compare-mendeley/

As Mendeley have provided this comparison there is probably a small element of bias. The table shows that Mendeley and Zotero are very closely matched.

Both products look really good and I wish they had been around when I was writing assignments. I think I would personally use Zotero. It integrates well with word and allows a great deal of flexibility around the storing and organising of references. It also seems intuitive to use.

These products would be very beneficial for library users. Our NHS trust doesn't subscribe to a referencing tool at all so it would be great to recommend these free tools. They make the storing, sharing and organising of references very easy and also allow notes to be added to references.

All in all a very useful insight!