Research A-Z: Organize

There is a lot of Web 2.0 information out there: blogs, rss feeds, bookmarks, and wikis. Create a customized start page that has all of your important research in one place.  

iGoogle was retired on Nov. 1, 2013.  Consider the following alternatives:

• igHome
• NetVibes
• Start.me
• uStart

You've downloaded dozens of articles on your research topic, only to realize that you did not capture complete bibliographic information and forgot where you put the files.  There must be a better way!

There is.  Using bibliographic software such as Zotero, you can automatically capture bibliographic information and attached files, organize your research materials into collections and subcollections, search within or across collections, take notes, and automatically create properly formatted bibliographies. 

Our favorite research tool is Zotero, a free extension to the Firefox web browser that makes it easy to manage your research materials.  With Zotero 2.0, you can also create collaborative bibliographies with researchers and access your research collections from any computer.  To learn more about Zotero, you can sign up for a free short-course offered by Fondren's Digital Media Commons (DMC), view Zotero's handy screencast tutorials, read Zotero's online tutorials, or consult a guide prepared by the DMC (pdf file at the bottom of the page). 

Zotero Interface: Downloading a Reference into a Collection with One Click

Other bibliographic management tools include:

• CiteULike: "A free service for managing and discovering scholarly references...[used] to organise your academic papers." (Free, web-based)
• Mendeley: "Free social software for managing and sharing research papers. It is also a Web 2.0 site for discovering research trends and connecting to like-minded academics." (Free, Windows/Mac/Linux)
• Papers: "Papers bundles all the great technologies that come with Mac OS X to give you a completely new workflow for reading scientific articles. You seek, download, archive, and organize all your articles within a single application. But that is just the start, using spotlight you instantly find the paper you are looking for. Read it fullscreen, add your notes, send a copy to a colleague..." (Commercial, Mac OS X)
• RefWorks: "RefWorks -- an online research management, writing and collaboration tool -- is designed to help researchers easily gather, manage, store and share all types of information, as well as generate citations and bibliographies." (Commercial, web-based)