So... I've kind of started a quest for academic research tools and tips! I haven't had time to go into great depth with it, but what I've thus far discovered has been very interesting.
To go on a quick tangent... There is apparently a lot of effort being done right now toward Web 2.0 academic research, building communities of academic research through various tools. I'm fascinated with this idea. It really confounds me why academic research and writing seems to always be approached so autonomously and individualistically (that's so "Enlightenment" era...). I really hunger to see theological academics approached communally, with "many members of one body" coming together, balancing out each others' weaknesses. End tangent....
To go on a quick tangent... There is apparently a lot of effort being done right now toward Web 2.0 academic research, building communities of academic research through various tools. I'm fascinated with this idea. It really confounds me why academic research and writing seems to always be approached so autonomously and individualistically (that's so "Enlightenment" era...). I really hunger to see theological academics approached communally, with "many members of one body" coming together, balancing out each others' weaknesses. End tangent....
Just last night I did some more searching and found what looks to be a very interesting program called NoteScribe (http://www.notescribe.net). I watched a few introductory videos on it last night, and tested it out the demo version of it today. It's pretty cool. You can organize notes under different keywords and categories and subcategories. You can also attach files (like .pdf of articles or books), and use it as a bibliographic manager as well, but it's strongest attribute is its ability to organize a database of notes, and access them in many different ways. Quite worth checking out for academics, novelists (background research, notes on characters, etc.), and pastors (it would be an awesome bank for illustrations, etc.), etc.
But the program that looks most impressive to me (especially since it is FREE) is Zotero (http://www.zotero.org/). I was introduced to this when I found this video (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CmKKFvKxXj4) that demonstrates Google Scholar, OneNote, and Zotero. Zotero is an add-on to Mozilla Firefox web browser you can use to easily download bibliographic info from the web to Endnote and into Word (you just download the plugins for Firefox and MS Word). In fact, you don't even need another bibliographic manager (like Endnote or Refworks), because this does all of that. The only advantage having EndNote that I could think of is the "cite while you write" feature, which makes Endnote easier to do the actual writing/citing. But it's not that much harder to use Zotero's plugin for Word. For each bibliographic item in Zotero, you can make limitless notes, keywords/tags, and even attach files (like journal articles, etc.), or attach a hyperlink to wherever the file is on your harddrive, or attach links to the web...whatever. In addition to all of that, you can also capture web pages, attach them to the biblio. entry, and highlight and make notes in the margin. Plus, you can do simple or advanced searches that will actually search the *content* of your documents attached (however much you decide to index). That is just phenomenal. Similar programs I have seen cost $200-$400. This Zotero demonstration video knocked my socks off (http://www.zotero.org/static/videos/tour/zotero_tour.htm). It would be great to use with NoteScribe.
I'm very interested in how MS OneNote might be utilized for managing academic research and writing. It has great promise especially for outlining. Lately I've been using ActionOutline (http://www.actionoutline.com/) for outlining, and I like it better than OneNote for outlining because you can very easily move information around. While it has been very helpful, I'm not entirely satisfied with it. It doesn't seem to really intersect well with other applications (drag and drop functions, etc.), and it needs a more user-friendly highlighter functionality.
Okay, that's all for now. If you discover any helpful tools or strategies for academic research, please let me know. Leave a comment about it.
-Adam
** I am going to try to keep this blog post updated as I continue to figure things out.
UPDATE: 1/28/09
Okay, that's all for now. If you discover any helpful tools or strategies for academic research, please let me know. Leave a comment about it.
-Adam
** I am going to try to keep this blog post updated as I continue to figure things out.
UPDATE: 1/28/09
- For searching full texts of documents (including .pdf, .doc, .docx, and more), I think Google Desktop looks about as good as anything, and it is free. It might help to get this plugin for desktop that allows you to tweak the indexing a little bit.
- For hyperlinking to certain points in a Word document (e.g. "Chapter 3"), you can create a bookmark. Copy that bookmark, and then paste it into another program (like OneNote), and you have a convenient little hyperlink. I can't figure out how to do this with .pdf though.
- I highly recommend Foxit PDF viewer for research purposes. It is free, much faster than Adobe, and takes up less space. But what I REALLY like about it is that you can actually highlight the .pdf text. There is only one thing that I really wish they could change on the product. When you highlight something, and then copy it, and paste it into another program, it does not carry the highlighted aspect of the text, but pastes it as plain text. If there was a way to fix that, that would be perfect.
- http://www.pdf-search-engine.com/ This is a cool little tool for those who like to keep a eBook/article library.
- Some other excellent tools to use for research...
- scholar.google.com : search tool for academic articles and texts
- books.google.com: search full texts of thousands of books of all kinds
- Amazon.com: also has capability of searching full texts of many books.
- Other Search Engines: This link has a thorough list of many academic search engines.
