Robbins Library Notes

Good morning, readers!  Happy Monday, and March, to you!

Last week, I received an e-mail from Victor Henning, one of the co-founders of a new research paper management tool called Mendeley.

In his e-mail to me, Henning writes:

Mendeley is a combination of free desktop software (available for Windows, Mac and Linux) and website for managing and sharing research papers, as well as for discovering research trends and like-minded academics. You can have a look at the features here: http://www.mendeley.com/tour.

After looking at this, and some reviews from others, what Mendeley is good for is organizing the mass of PDF and Word papers that you’ve accumulated in the course of your research, and sharing them with others.  As another reviewer writes:

A relatively new program, still in beta, Mendeley works with Macs, PCs, & the Linux operating system. It lets you manage your papers online, discover research trends, connect with other researchers in your field, and coming soon, learn about the readership of your own publications: how many readers you have, what disciplines they’re in, & where they’re from.

You can insert citations & create bibliographies in your Word documents using Mendeley, although it is a much less sophisticated system than EndNote, for example. But you can export the information that you collect through Mendeley into other citation management programs, if you wish.

You can also add a public profile & follow other researchers profile updates (think LinkedIn or Facebook.)

In other words, Mendeley is a helpful tool to use in conjunction with citation management programs like Zotero and EndNote.  And, you can follow (and be followed by) other researchers if you create a public profile.  Here’s a great way to network, collaborate, and share research.

Do check Mendeley out.  I have signed up for a free account myself, and am planning on experimenting with it in the next few weeks.