Peter Giger

The reference workflow is different depending on situation, but this is my workflow for the web based article mentioned in the previous post.

This is no tutorial. This is a description of my workflow in a particular situation. Some prior knowledge might be necessary to understand, or some effort of gaining information about the applications and web services I mention.

The article has been published in the swedish journal/magazine Ord & Bild. It has been translated to English and is republished in Eurozine. I use this version because it is the most available. Sometimes I get the feeling that some researchers refer to obscure, unavailable versions of an article instead of a version available on the web. Probably because they think it looks more serious or academic that way. Stupid isn’t it. Always use the most available version, if you can choose.

Step one: Getting the reference into CiteULike. CiteULike has a bookmarklet. I have to copy and paste the author, add the year and some small details. I also download the PDF version and upload it to CiteULike, to have my own copy to get back to. If there is no PDF to download, I create it from the web page and upload it. This is my backup-article. I also use CiteULike for social reasons, to find articles in the same way I use Flickr to view pictures or YouTube to watch videos.

Step two: Being on the Liedman post in CiteULike, I click on the icon at the right side in the URL filed to copy the reference into Zotero. In Zotero, I also choose Attachements / Add / Save a link to the current page. This works as a link to the place where the fulltext is located. Now, I can use the Zotero plugin in Open Office Writer to use the reference in an essay.

Step three: Well, you can stop here If you like, but recently I have added a step. I drag and drop the PDF in a notebook called “Articles” in Evernote. In this notebook I store all articles I use in my research. I also pickup the bibtex record from CiteULike and paste it above the PDF attachment. This is to always have a bibtex record together with the file in Evernote. To use attachments in Evernote, I think you might have to use the payed version – which is worth every penny… (update: some formats works with the free version, such as pdf & mp3, and of course the more ovious text, html, jpeg, gif, png, wav)

When I’m reading the article, or checking something out after I have read it, I double-click the aricle in Evernote. Adobe Acrobat opens and I can add comments and highlights. When I press sync in Evernote, the whole database is synched with the Evernote server and I can access all my articles from my account on the web. When I open Evernote one of my other computers, Evernote on this computer is synched with the Evernote server. The articles I just downloaded, read and commented on the previous computer also appears on this computer. The comments are visible on most PDF readers, I think, but if I am on my Mac or Windows I can use Adobe Acrobat to make comments. On a Linux machine I settle for reading.

There are two recent services/technologies I would highlight as important steps to a networking future, Dropbox and Spotify. Neither of these services primarily target the “friend space” which got practically all attention during the recent years. A friend space has been a standard feature for most web services and technologies recently. Dropbox and Spotify has some some social features but their strong side is new solutions to old problems. Dropbox is the ideal syncing service and Spotify delivers streaming music as smooth as iTunes or MS Mediaplayer.

You install Dropbox on your computer. It works cross platform for Mac, Linux and Windows. When dropbox is installed you get a folder called “dropbox” in your Finder, Nautilus, Exporer or whatever your file manager is called. Everything you put in the dropbox folder is synced with your account on the dropbox server. Lets say your are editing the document veronaproject.odt on your Mac. It’s located in the dropbox folder. As soon as you press save in the word processor, the document is synced seamlessly with the dropbox server. Next, you go to your Windows machine, open your word processor and open the same file from your dropbox folder. It’s the latest version of the document you just edited on your Mac. After that you go to your Ubuntu and edit the same document. Everything works seamlessly, without hassle. It just works.

The free version of dropbox comes with 2 GB storing, and a 50 GB paid version is available for 99 dollar / year.

Spotify looks a lot like iTunes. It is a software and service for streaming music from the Spotify server to your desktop. It works practically flawlessly. The music starts immediately and plays without any sign of streaming sickness. Spotify is like day and night compared to earlier streaming services.

Music is static for me. I don’t create music myself. I don’t have to “own” music files in the same way I have to own my document files, photos or home video files. I’m very happy to spend an amount every month on a subscription service, where all music I can imagine is available. My listening habits is registered, recalculated in dollar and distributed to the artists. I don’t have to host the files myself and I actually do something for the environment. If everyone switched to streaming music, the world would save a lot of energy in fewer hard disks -  digital storing is becoming more and more of a environmental problem in the world. Spotify is native for Mac and Windows and works well under Wine on Linux. There are both a free and a paid version. The free version is still invites only, but the paid versions is available for everyone (in some countries). It will cost you about 10 euro / month or 1 euro for 24 hours, and it’s worth every penny.

Spotify have some initial shortcomings. The most obvious shortcoming is the inability to use it on portable devices, another is that not all music is available yet. It has also been some instability in the catalog, some albums are available one day and gone the other day. This problem is due to the record companies, and will hopefully be solved as the service gets more and more attention and users. And the Spotify team is working hard to add music to the database.