Knowledge Leadership Associates » How-to

Zotero Personal Bibliographic Manager — new Android and iPhone applications enhance its functionality

Peter G. Underwood — Tue, 18 Oct 2011 12:43:09 +0000

Zotero has become a popular choice for those seeking a free and open-source Personal Bibliographic Manager (PBM). In addition to its many useful features, several independent developers have produced helper applications (“apps”) for use with cellphones using the Android operating system. These apps are mostly aimed at the tiresome end of using any PBM: getting the metadata into the system.

Zandy is a well-configured application that allows users to edit and view their Zotero libraries, add new items, and work offline. This means that metadata can be added easily and from various locations, such as a library or when conducting research. So, instead of scribbling notes (and then losing them) about new publications, an Android (version 2.2 or above) user can capture the metadata and upload to a personal Zotero datafile. Costing R31.35, it offers a lot of functionality and future releases promise even more.

Let’s go a little further: how about being able to scan the barcode of a book and automatically capturing the metadata about it? This is what Scanner for Zotero offers for a price of R15.64. Scan the ISBN barcode of a book with an Android (version 1.6 or above) phone, and the software will add the book to a personal Zotero datafile.

If you are an iPhone user, then BibUp may be of interest. It is also a scanner but provides the additional functionality of photographing specific pages to be collected, on which BibUp will even perform Optical Character Recognition (OCR). Users of the iPod Touch should note that the low quality of the images captured by its camera makes effective use of this application difficult.

ZotFile Reader eases the transfer of Zotero-based files in Portable Document Format (PDF) to and from mobile readers like Android devices and the iPad, by automating the attachment of PDFs to Zotero items, and the renaming of those files according to conventions decided by the user.

Quite a feast of useful applications! it is well worth following the Zotero blog for information about other useful innovations and, also, for some excellent advice and tutorials on using Zotero.

Zotero Personal Bibliographic Manager — new Android and iPhone applications enhance its functionality is a post from: Knowledge Leadership Associates

Facebook, Linkedin . . . I haven’t got time!

Peter G. Underwood — Thu, 13 Oct 2011 08:17:15 +0000

You know the feeling: everyone is talking about the use of social media, even in our information services domain. Many librarians and information services managers are making use of it to promote the use of information resources, launch discussions about searching techniques and search engine features — but how do they manage the time? Lisa Buyer is coming to your rescue: her article, “18 minutes a day to social media time management” (Search Engine Watch, 12 October 2011), provides some simple and effective guidelines. In summary she suggests a three-step process:

Plan your use of social media a first activity of the day: make this a regular entry in your work diary and do not let this activity be displaced.
Commit a certain amount of time to using the social media and set an alarm to monitor its use.
Review what has been done at the end of the working day: do not take this aspect of work home with you!

She also suggests that one should be rigorous in deciding in what to get engaged and what to ignore. So, if you cannot see the value of responding to invitations from colleagues or friends to join them on some social networking site, then don’t — and don’t feel guilty about it.

Facebook, Linkedin . . . I haven’t got time! is a post from: Knowledge Leadership Associates

How to make your own e-book

Peter G. Underwood — Wed, 12 Oct 2011 07:39:03 +0000

There are many e-books available in a variety of formats — but suppose the text you want is not available in an e-text format? What if you wanted to create your own e-book for personal use or to convert it from a common format such as Portable Document Format (PDF)? Two software applications may be useful. Sigil, is a What You See Is What You Get (WYSIWYG) open-source, XML-based, ePub editor that is free and available in versions that will run under Windows, the Mac OS and Linux. Sigil allows you to produce an e-book in the ePub format (which is an open standard) by either importing text in HyperText Markup Language (HTML) format or by copying-and-pasting text from a document in a .txt format (other format import options will also soon be available). With the exception of the Kindle, the ePub format is accepted by all of the major e-book reading devices. In the case of the Kindle, processing the Sigil-produced text using Calibre will convert it to the format used by Kindle: .mobi — which is an abbreviation for “Mobipocket” — try http://www.ehow.com/facts_5563134_file-extension-mobi.html for further information. If you wish to read more about these possibilities, an article by Mark Sample, “Create your own e-book with open-source Sigil” (Chronicle of higher education, 12 October 2011), is a good place to start.

How to make your own e-book is a post from: Knowledge Leadership Associates

Marketing our services

Peter G. Underwood — Sat, 03 Sep 2011 06:41:15 +0000

Ned Potter, in his guise as “The Wikiman”, has produced excellent guidance on the seemingly-simple task of marketing our library and information services. Simple, yes, but all too easy to get wrong. His blog entry of 25 August 2011, Three simple marketing rules all libraries should live by… can be summarised as:

Market the service, not the content: tell the potential user what your service can do, not what it contains.
No-one cares about the “how”! Market in terms of the benefits of using the service, not how it works.
Market what THEY value, but continue to do what WE value: know what it is that users want or need to do and orient marketing to that.

If you are designing a marketing campaign for your service, his blog entry is required reading — and don’t miss the second part of the entry!

Marketing our services is a post from: Knowledge Leadership Associates

Software asset management: a neglected area

Peter G. Underwood — Fri, 05 Aug 2011 07:39:24 +0000

Software is an essential purchase for most organisations — there is no point in having hardware and network technology if these facilities cannot be put to productive use. However, the cost of software licenses is high and a recent survey suggests that most organisations overspend on licensing and maintenance by anything up to 30% and that the cost of software purchase can amount to some 20% of organisational expenditure. Proper procedures for the management of software are essential if money is not to be squandered. A White Paper, Essentials of software asset management, produced by Dell Corporation includes useful advice on how this can be done.

Software asset management: a neglected area is a post from: Knowledge Leadership Associates

Copyright and fair use

Peter G. Underwood — Wed, 03 Aug 2011 07:24:55 +0000

The “Fair Use” convention allows the use of small portions of copyrighted materials, without permission, in certain circumstances. It is this agreement that enables one to make a copy of a journal article, for example, for research and private study, to quote from a work that one is reviewing or include quotations in lecture materials. The convention is a privilege — it is not a right — and really constitutes an agreement that the copyright holder will ignore use of material (and, thus, breach of copyright) provided it is within the guidelines.

There is much confusion about how the convention of Fair Use is applied. An article in the 2 August 2011 issue of Inside Higher Ed seeks to explain what can and what cannot be done under the convention. Patrica Aufderheide, in “Myths about Fair Use“, provides a clear explanation and reasoning for the provisions of the convention; although she writes from the perspective of an academic in the United States of America, the guidance she offers is equally applicable in South Africa, wherein the legal system also accepts the Fair Use convention.

Testing, testing . . .

Peter G. Underwood — Sat, 30 Jul 2011 08:46:08 +0000

Dave Ragals’ column on the Search Engine Watch site is often worth viewing. The entry for 29 July 2011 is no exception: in it, he presents a thoughtful piece on “Why your organization needs a culture of testing and how to make it happen“. Although it is written from the point-of-view of a Search Engine Marketer (SEM), it contains information valuable for anyone running a business, leading a small organisation or department: it is all about considering business processes and testing them as a continuous part of the operation. He writes, “I’m not talking about running a creative test every once in a while or even launching tests reactively to understand why performance is tanking. A true culture of testing is a way of thinking. It means: Embracing and relying on consistent testing to lift your game; Having a true plan that extends months out; Understanding that not every test works and you can learn as much from a failed test as you can from a successful one;Making this part of your mission statement – something that you and everyone on your team are committed to (this one is most important)”. Thereafter, he outlines a plan for testing, using clear schematics.

Testing, testing . . . is a post from: Knowledge Leadership Associates

How to tell a good story . . .

Peter G. Underwood — Tue, 22 Feb 2011 15:05:32 +0000

The value of narrating stories has long been recognised in Knowledge Management: such accounts often contain a wealth of tacit knowledge, unacknowledged insights and other useful information about an organisation, its business practices and the “real” job, as distinct from the one we describe in our job descriptions. To be valuable, a story needs to be rich but robust. In a recent American Express Open Forum blog, Jennifer Aaker and Andy Smith consider the Seven Deadly Sins of business storytelling, providing helpful guidelines and concluding that stories need to be documented and stored because of the tacit knowledge they contain.

How to tell a good story . . . is a post from: Knowledge Leadership Associates

You’ve heard of YouTube — are there any similar sites?

Peter G. Underwood — Fri, 21 Jan 2011 12:33:38 +0000

The Next Web (TNW) for 10 January 2010 has a social media section containing an article by Paul Sawers (6 awesome alternatives to YouTube) that outlines the feature of some alternative video-sharing websites. One, in particular, might be useful for libraries and information services: “Videojug” is a video-sharing website with a difference. It’s essentially a repository for how-to videos for life-hackers, with thousands of physical demonstrations on just about everything, from changing a light-bulb to dismantling your pop-up tent. Many of the videos begin with an advert though.”

You’ve heard of YouTube — are there any similar sites? is a post from: Knowledge Leadership Associates

Help with presentations

Peter G. Underwood — Sat, 08 Jan 2011 08:16:09 +0000

Freebase (http://www.freebase.com) provides an interesting research environment in which visitors can use all types of publicly-available data to create “entities” which can be connected and manipulated into a graph format. Some thirteen million entities are presently available. Freebase is compatible with all operating systems, including Linux.

SlideRocket (http://www.sliderocket.com) is designed as a collaborative site where PowerPoint presentations can be stored “in the cloud”, making them available from any networked location. The free version is very versatile, and will probably suit most users: there is a “pay” version available, with extra features. SlideRocket is compatible with all operating systems, including Linux.

Adapted from The Scout Report, Copyright Internet Scout Project 1994-2011. http://scout.wisc.edu/

Help with presentations is a post from: Knowledge Leadership Associates