Wednesday, 12 September 2012

Thing 14: With Reference to Mendeley(ing) my Ways!



Like others, I too manually input my references and bibliography for my degree (…are those violins I hear playing? Oh and before you ask, no I wasn’t using a quill when I wrote my essays!) I don’t recall any mention of referencing tools being made at the time for some reason, but in case those out there think I live in a cave I have subsequently been made aware of EndNote and RefWorks (just haven’t got my hands on either properly as yet). I can’t really complain about this state of affairs, I was quite content to add my references and what not in this way as I could make sure that it was all done, as my Grandmother would say, ‘in the proper manner’ (I like to check and double check things and check again…wait that’s OCD isn’t it?) Having said that the prospect of a nice little tool to help me on my way is rather appealing and although at the moment there is no pressing need for me to have this (bar knowing about it in order to help others and generally being beaky) in the future when it comes to doing my M.A. and getting back into writing essays this would be rather handy.
I wavered between having a crack at Zotero or Mendeley, but opted in the end for Mendeley having read other people’s blog posts about it and I rather liked the supporting videos that the website offered (I do like a good introductory video), as well as the group/collaborative potential that Mendeley has. I’m also rather pleased with the annotation function.
It was very easy to download, which has earned it some extra Brownie points from me! However, it is early days yet in my exploration of this tool, but so far so good. All in all though it seems rather straight forward! Onwards and upwards!

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