Posts Tagged → irm10
IRM10 – RefWorks to deliver ‘new titles’
This session from Paul Stainthorp (University of Lincoln) is looking at how he has used RefWorks to power ‘new titles’ lists for the library website.
‘New title’ lists are lists of new resources that have been purchased by the library – a way of informing staff and students what is being bought, and what the latest acquisitions are. Demand for the service from faculties, and also a way of the library being accountable. It has been done in the past, but using paper lists, which was time consuming.
Unfortunately the library system used at Lincoln doesn’t have this functionality out of the box, and the library doesn’t have the resources to add on the functionality. So looked at using existing tools to do it instead. Subject librarians and students already familiar with RefWorks – Paul has been promoting it for the last 3 years!
Paul working within the constraints of current systems and current working practices. So, he set to design something using RefWorks, Yahoo Pipes, Google Feedburner, Feed2JS.
When a new book is received it is added to a RefWorks account – organised by subject – e.g. add all books on journalism to a single folder. Then use the ‘RefShare’ functionality to publish the folder as a RSS feed. Paul is happy at this point – everything from this point on is window dressing 
Paul then uses Yahoo Pipes (it’s good, free and powerful, but perhaps not for everyone). Yahoo pipes extracts ISBN from RefWorks RSS feed, then checks for information on Amazon.co.uk – if it finds anything it enhances the reference, it formats it nicely, creates a link from the item to the OPAC (using ISBN) and strips out any extraneous information. Typical enhancement from Amazon is cover image. Also adds links to other services – e.g. RefWorks, Google Books, LibraryThing, Amazon.
Feedburner used to shorten the URL for the RSS feed, allows email subscriptions to RSS feed. Feed2JS used to enable the display of the lists within web pages – specifically Blackboard.
See slides at http://www.slideshare.net/pstainthorp/feed-me-weird-things-using-refworks-rss-feeds-for-new-title-lists
Innovations in Reference Management 2010
Today the TELSTAR project is running an event on ‘Innovations in Reference Management’. As we’ve been working on the project we’ve found that there seems to be a lack of ‘community’ to discuss and collaborate around the practice of Reference Management. Even in terms of products there doesn’t seem to be a strong ‘user group’ (in an organised fashion at any rate) for any of the major Reference Management packages such as RefWorks, EndNote, Zotero etc.
As we talked to others across the HE community about the project, we found that there was a lot of interest in what we were doing, and that there was quite a lot of innovation going on around the practice of Reference Management and the use of the relevant software. We felt there would be real value in running an event to highlight some of this work.
So, IRM10 (follow #irm10 on Twitter, or see an archives of all tweets at http://www.twapperkeeper.com/irm10/) is happening today – we’ve got a great programme (see http://www.open.ac.uk/telstar/event/programme) and I hope it will be an interesting day. I’ll be posting throughout the day on this blog, and we are recording all the sessions so we’ll be posting these later.
Innovations in Reference Management
Following on from my earlier post, I’m now very pleased to announce the Innovations in Reference Management event, which is taking place on 14th January 2010, at Kents Hill in Milton Keynes. This free event will include talks looking at how reference management relates to real-time impact metrics, social bookmarking, digital preservation, the semantic web, and also showcasing some innovative use of reference management software at the Open University and the University of Lincoln.
You can visit the event page for more information, full programme details, and to register.