Eresearch a quick romp through some useful tools

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E-research -a quick romp through some useful
tools

• Russell Beale
• Advanced Interaction Group
• R.Beale_at_cs.bham.ac.uk

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Overview

• Writing tools
• Internet search and veracity
• Reference management
• Remote access to e-resources

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What are blogs?

• wild, random, unconstrained ramblings
• self-obsessive diaries
• Chronologically ordered postings on a web page
• Mainly text, a few images, and links to other
  pages

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Blog usage

• Format supports stream-of-consciousness thinking
• Supports diary format
• Rapid, fits with fragmented working patterns

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Example
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Writing is thinking

• Writing is a tool for thinking
• Not something to be done after the fact
• Document thoughts, ideas, decisions, problems
• Provides much of the text for dissertation
• Tool for communicating with supervisor?

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Reflective practice

• After Kolb 1984

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Internet search

• Google - Assess veracity
• extension
• .ac.uk, .edu probably fine
• .net. .org ok but be cautious
• .com fine for product info but beware
• Personal sites may be fine, and could be awful
• Download time
• Better sites are faster

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Clever search terms

• Be clever in abstracting your terms
• Google based on page title, headings, first
  paragraph words what will be in the page you
  want?
• Caps not significant
• Word order is
• word must be there
• - word must not be there
• contiguous words to look for phrase
• inside phrase allows none or more words in
  between

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• Looks for academic papers
• Searches University sites and digital libraries
• Default choice for many

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Digital Libraries

• ACM digital library
• http//portal.acm.org/
• CiteSeer
• http//citeseer.ist.psu.edu/
• Ingenta
• http//www.ingentaconnect.com/content
• Scirus
• http//www.scirus.com/srsapp/
• E-journals from IS
• http//www.ejournals.bham.ac.uk/

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More DLs Bibliographies

• Web of Knowledge
• http//portalt.wok.mimas.ac.uk/
• Web of Science
• Science citation index
• Shows how influential journals are
• The collection of Computer Science Bibliographies
• http//liinwww.ira.uka.de/bibliography/index.html
• Bibfinder
• http//kilimanjaro.eas.asu.edu/
• E-resources from IS
• www.eresources.bham.ac.uk

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Reference management

• Use a reference database
• Itll save vast amounts of time in the long run
• Put in the URL if its available online
• Put in the abstract or some notes as wellBibTeX
• Some good BibTeX tools are
• bibjoin merges entries if you have different
  versions of an entry from many sources
• bibclean Tidies, indents, fixes bibtex files.
  Very configurable.
• citetags Extracts the list of keys cited from in
  a .tex or .aux file
• citefind Extracts the bibtex entries from a list
  of keys (maybe from citetags)
• bibextract Extract bibtex entries based on
  regular expressions
• bibcheck Checks a bibtex file for syntax errors
• biborder Changes the order of fields in all
  bibtex entries to be the same
• bibdup Finds duplicate keys
• biblabel Generates nice consistent keys for
  bibtex enttries, can be used with...
• citesub Substitutes citation keys, normally
  produced by biblabel
• biblex Lexically analyses a bibtex file and
  outputs a sort of XML like version
• Bibunlex Does the opposite. Can work on the token
  stream from bibclean
• bibsort Sorts a bibtex file by any key you
  choose
• bibsplit Splits a bibtex file into several files
  based on the key you choose

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EndNote

• Reference manager for Word
• CiteWhileYouWrite options
• Easy addition, management and use
• Connects to online databases to search, find and
  extract references
• Flakey connections
• Much simpler to use than BibTex

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Citeulike

• Automates capturing of references from digital
  libraries and academic sites
• Exports to BibTeX and EndNote
• Great for sharing refs with colleagues
• Fast, easy
• Javascript bookmarklet
• Couple with GoogleScholar and a local reference
  manager

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CiteULike
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Proxies

• Many of the e-resources require Athens
  (University) login
• Can set up a tunnel and proxy
• Looks to resource as if you are originating at
  the Uni
• Read supportweb pages for details
• On mac, use SSH Tunnel Manager Locations

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Wireless networking on campus

• Uses your central universitys login
• In the school, register MAC address with support,
  get SSID and WEP key

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Wireless networking elsewhere

• Location-independent networking
• Use your Birmingham login to authenticate to
  wireless networks in many other UK Universities
• Need your .bham account, not .cs.bham one