ISO a researcher's assistant in browser
Professional
Many text processing systems are used for academic papers; many text
processing systems have bibliographic systems. This question is not
about formatting ther bibliography, but about collecting it (from the
web) in the first place.
BRIEF: does anyone have tools, e.g. FireFox plugins, to make
collecting documents, provenance, easier?
DETAIL:
I am doing what amounts to literature research. Not unlike the
academic part of doing a Ph.D.
Yes, I know: Google is my friend. Actually, I want to get even
friendlier with Google and my browser.
Specifically, when I collect a document via Googling, I need to save
the document, along with what I call provenance or bibliographic
information, such as
=> Copy of the document (PDF, whatever)
=> URL of the document
=> URL of web page saved from (and maybe a copy)
=> Some notes about the document
-> Often cut and pasted from text on the web page pointing
-> Often edited / added to by hand
=> Typically, save the above in a folder, and/or save the file/
document, with folder names or filenames azs above
-> Name the folder something related to the document
often the link text <a href=”unintelligible-name.pdf”>Human
readable name</a>
+ Possibly edited
=> Date and time collected
=> Any information that can be found as to the effective date and time
of the documenrt
-> e.g. when it was posted, etc.
-> often found on the linked from web page
Doing this by hand takes me a few minutes. Which is probably why so
many of the documents and papers that I have saved in my personal
collection don't have a complete provenance.
I wonder if anyone has tools, e.g. plugins for a web browser like
FireFox or Internet Explorer.
This is what people call a “researchers assistant”. As in,
academic, library research.
I have already found Zotero, which is quite close. It takes about 3
mouse clicks to do the above. It also generates nice bibliographic
references that can be inserted into an academic paper, or a
claimchart.
I can imagine reducing it to 1 mouse action: select text, use
tyext as note, save link in selection, present text for editing as
file and folder names.
Unfortunately, Zotero uses a somewhat idiosyncratic filesystem
format. It saves the files as completely unrelated names. You can’t
browse it, apparently, except via Zotero.
If everyone used Zotero, it might be okay. But it doesn’t look
like I can share Zotero with non-Zotero users easily.
Barring this, does anyone have sample code that comes close - e.g.
munges the selection in a browser? E.g. Xul code for FireFox, or VBA
for IE?
Volkmar Kobelt
> Unfortunately, Zotero uses a somewhat idiosyncratic filesystem
> format. It saves the files as completely unrelated names. You can’t
> browse it, apparently, except via Zotero.
> If everyone used Zotero, it might be okay. But it doesn’t look
> like I can share Zotero with non-Zotero users easily.
Do you know of Mendeley? http://www.mendeley.com/
At least, there you can store PDF documents in a folder by names built fom
the document titles.
Probably, you will know already
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_reference_management_software
Volkmar