NTT that can assist in a review of the literature

I get a kick out of telling my students of how I used to use stacks of 3" x 5" index cards to organize my references for research papers. Their looks of astonishment are priceless. Later generations were required to purchase expensive software such as Endnotes, that was supposed to make it easier to produce picture-perfect reference lists and bibliographies.

Times have changed!

Most researchers now make extensive use of online search tools and databases, and increasing numbers of publications are available as full-text. There are many ways to handle this, such as bookmarks in a web browser, Word processors now have features that help, but they are still clunky solutions.

Enter open source software and Web 2.0. One of the beauties of the open source movement is that if there is interest in software that will perform a new function, there are probably people somewhere in the world who will write the code and develop the app that fills the need, even if there is no apparent profit to be made.

Here are two potentially useful tools that can help you get your references better organized, and also form a research community with your colleagues:

1) Zotero - this is a great add-on for the Mozilla Firefox web browser. After you have installed it, you can save references with one click and then export them in any style you choose.

2) Connotea - This is a Web 2.0 tool that allows multiple researchers to annotate, tag and share references.

Click on the link below to view a very brief overview of these two useful tools:

http://tinyurl.com/nttlitreview