Cloud Computing for Researchers - Mendeley Your Life!
Occasionally on Cultural Bytes I will review tools that help my ethnographer-self stay sane, organized and useful to society. I am confident to say that every researcher I know IS CURRENTLY dealing with what I am addressing below - citation and PDF nightmares. Today is the first day you can take a step towards freedom, organization, and access.
In Russian, Mendeley means comforter of the mind. What better name for a product that is a comforter for researchers! (here’s the founders’ explanation for the name, which I found out has nothing to do with the Russian meaning)
This software will change your researching-intellectual, academiky life forever! Sick of dealing with all those pdf’s on your computer, entering in citations by hand, looking for citations in your old documents, dealing with endnotes, and not being able to access your citations remotely? Most of us are dealing with this issue. Olivia Judson recently wrote about her academic organizing woes with managing PDF’s in NY Times,
“…it became easier to re-research a subject each time I wanted to think about it, and to download the papers again. My hard drive has filled up with duplicates; my office, with stalagmites of paper…In short, access to information is easier and faster than ever before but there’s been no obvious way to manage it once you’ve got it.”
Well Julia there’s a solution, MENDELEY SOLVES ALL THESE PROBLEMS! We all share similar citation nightmares! It’s time to get ride of endnotes, refworks, zotero and whatever other wannabe hawt citation software manager you use - and get yourself Mendeley! And they don’t discriminate - they love MAC and PC users!
This is cloud computing for researchers. How would you feel if you could access your PDF’s and citations anywhere in the world? if you could share citation lists with colleagues in just one click? If you never had to re-download your PDF’s again? If you could search for books on Amazon.com and click one button to cite the book you are buying? If you could just drop citations into Word or whatever document without having to shell out a couple hundred of dollars for Endnotes? If you could network with other researchers and see their citation lists? If you could just add whatever books you see in Google Book search to your citation list with one click?
Imaginations for researchers come true also - with Mendeley you have can have all these desires fulfilled!
Think of this as an itunes for your pdf’s + Linkedin + facebook + doppler + updated CV + Papers (for macs)+ all the features of every single citation manager out there + love + intellect + seamlessness. Welcome to the world of Mendeley - Loveeee!
If you’re like me - traveling in different cities every week and working between 3 different computers (MACs and PCs) - then this is truly your dream come true. Or if you just work between your office and home computer this is a dream! And even if you are just on 1 computer - this could just be as good as the invention of rss!
I suggest you take out a few hours to play with it and then set aside a week to import all your citations and get your academik life together! It’s worth it! They are still in beta, so there are little quirks here and there - but the Mendeley team is REALLY awesome and you can just write to them about your issues or post it online and they actually respond!
Below, I list my favorite features of Mendeley and some recommendations for how to use Mendeley.
1.) Mendeley works. It really works!!! that is a good enough reason to try it ou. In this picture of my Mendeley Desktop, I walk you through how to start it out! STEP 1.) create a group - you don’t have to do this but I like to organize my citations by topics, 2.) add a document - you can drag a PDF or do it this way below by clicking on the “add document” icon on top. STEP 3.) admire your pretty citations! update the info, make sure it’s correct, STEP 4.) check out their great search features!
2.) use it with dropbox if you switch between several computers- keep your PDF’s in your dropbox, and rename the file with the author’s last name and year. Dropbox is a virtual file folder that physically sits on each of your computers. It’s magic - you just have to install it and start moving your files there. You can access them online anytime!
store all your PDF’s in one folder - and never look at them again. Just like how you drop music in your itunes app without having to interact with the actual file itself, same thing here (this only works for people who are on 1 computer)! In this picture below you can see how my dropbox is on the far left, then I look for Victor Gonzalez’s work in my dropbox by his last name and just in case if I have to manually pull the file, (which I have to because I have I use dropbox on 3 different computers so once you switch it loses the directory path), you can then find it very easily in your folder. When I type in Gonzalez’s name in Mendeley, all his citations show up as linked to the files!
3.) Automatic recognition of a PDF’s meta-data when you drag and drop it into Mendeley. In the picture below, I show you how to just drag a PDF into Mendeley and it automatically recognizes the author, journal, pub date and etc. Think of this like itunes- when you drag a song over it copies a verion over to it’s own itunes folder.To activate this, you have to turn on File Organizer (they spell it “organiser” cuz they’re all british about it). The Mendeley Muz man says that “if you enable the File Organiser, this will make Mendeley create a copy of these files in their own folder, which it then links against. This means you’re then free to edit the original file names, or to move them about as need be without breaking the file links. To do this, open up Mendeley Desktop, go to the Preferences panel and select the “File Organiser” tab. From here, you can enable the file organiser, and also choose how it should store the files in this folder by enabling the rename or sorting into subfolders as you see fit.
Then I like to go to the tag-notes tab in Mendeley desktop and paste in the abstract and type in some tags. Make sure to SAVE it because pressing save in the meta-data tabs it doesn’t save the information for the entire file - you have to save in each tab. I hope they fix it next time update (update - they have said that this is fixed in the newest version).
4.) Access your PDF’s online anywhere! After you have dragged in a PDF sync your library and watch everything duplicate itself to your online library. THIS IS BIGG! That means just as long as Mendeley is not blocked where you are trying to access it, then you won’t ever have problems getting to the physical PDF online! And it’s not blocked in China so I am so confident about getting to all my files at any internet cafe!
5.) Seamless Syncing with your Mendeley Desktop and your online library! In this picture below I have side by side my desktop and my online Mendeley Library - you can see here that the citations match, and so do the grouping. completely identical! that means you could leave the country and then use a computer at an internet cafe or at a friend’s house and have access to all your citations and any synced pdf’s. And Last time I checked, Mendeley is NOT blocked in China!! (Drop box is blocked though which really sucks)
6.) import books from Amazon or Google Books! In this picture, I am looking at Go Away Dog in Google books - this is a very important book for academic researchers. with one click this book shows up in your Mendeley reference list. STEP 1.) read about the functions here, STEP 2.) install the bookmarklet by dragging it to your toolbar in firefox STEP 3.) start looking for books in AMazon or Google books! you can import multiple books at one time or just a single book like in the picture below.
7.) Produces beautiful ways of visualizing information. I love that Mendeley shows you stats about the most cited authors and the research fields that have the most Mendeley users.
I liked that in the Social Sciences tag cloud, technology and nude, were next to each other - kinda much us look like an exciting field huh?
Below you can see that bourdieu is the most cited, with Bruno Latour coming in second, then Manuel Castells, then Michele badass Foucault, and lastly WTF SAMUEL annOYING Huffington who wrote the Clash of Civilizations. We have to get Samuel off the top 5 and put someone - anyone - up there!
_____________________________________________________________________________
HOW IT COMPARES TO ZOTERO -ok so now that I’ve raved about Mendeley - I feel that I need to explain why I prefer Mendeley over Zotero since I wrote about how much I loved Zotero a few months ago on my old blog (I switched to tumblr for my personal blog!)
- Mendeley support team is wayy better than zotero. - For Mendeley, within 24 hours a staff (the co-founder!) responded to my questions. I have yet to hear back from Zotero staff about any of my problems that I posted in their help forum. I think that after I complained to some people who know some people at Zotero, eventually, one of the Zotero creators was sweet enough to write a personal email to me about my original zotero love post on my personal blog- he even offered to send me a t-shirt! So that was really nice of them, but I’m sorry Zotero staff - me firefox quits on me every time on zotero and i zpent a whole day trouble-shooting with no succezz!
- Mendeley staff actually write back to you! now I know that programmers, developers, and founders are busy and that they can’t write back to everyone - but after posting two problems on zotero i didn’t get any responses - still haven’t yet. In Mendeley land - I heard something back from the programmers within 8 hours!
- Mendeley’s help forums are better. l had to search through lots of support forums on Zotero to find out if others had similar problems in firefox as I did - and it wasn’t always clear if Zotero staff were aware of these problems. There was no clear mechanism for processing user-identified problems. In Mendeley, it’s clear that their staff are on top of the forum convos. It’s easier to navigate and they have a clear rating system that let’s you see how other users have prioritized proposed features or fixes to Mendeley staff.
- not firefox dependent. - THIS IS BIGGGGGG - You’re not dependent on firefox with mendeley. I love firefox - but my firefox started freaking out after a few hours of Zotero courtship. Out of desparation to make Zotero work (because I thought it was the best thing out there at the time), I actually spent 4 hours troubleshooting my firefox after I installed zotero - it messed with my extensions and eventually I had to perform a clean reinstall. Encountering the firefox crash again, I tested out zotero in flock but flock 2.0 is still wayyyy tooo slow and there was no way that I was even going near netscape - that’s when I resorted to the clean reinstall of firefox. But still Zotero was buggy. so the problem with having a browser dependent citation manager is that you’re dependent on that browser - and on that computer’s browsers.
- Mendeley has $$ - they just recieved $2million in VC money. Zotero is a non-profit model. While I work for non-profits and do see them as useful at times, I believe in the scalability of Mendeley more than Zotero. Now I am curious to find out Mendeley’s business model. right now I can upload ALL my PDf’s to Mendeley But good services are worth it when the rates are reasonable and your entire life depends on it. Maybe they will start charging all of us once we all fall in love with Mendeley - or offer some kind of tiered service. *but please don’t start charging me in the future since I am one of your beta fans!
- Mendeley has $$ from realllly smart people - did I mention the investors behind the $2million are founders of last.fm and skype? that’s all that needs to be said.
______________
If you will notice that in my comments, the human side of the service is just as important as the software application itself. Especially when a program is in beta, you have to be super keen to talking to your users. I always think that companies have a lot more at stake when they are starting out and the period after they’ve hit critical mass. Becasse when you’re popular - everyone want to use you and they will be forgiving about mishaps, slow-downs and etc. But once you have your customers and you become lazy in your product/service, eventually something better will replace you. Mendeley and Jan Reichelt, you have been wonderful during this courtship. So far your actions tell me that we will have a great relationship…so don’t mess it up.
For now, I will take on the responsibility of evangelizing Mendely around the world. Last time I checked on Mendeley user map, there were 3 users in San Diego, 1 in Mexico City and 1 in China. I think I can help increase those numbers. Just watch them go up! And right now there are only 280 Social Science users - we need to change that also!
I love being a beta-user and I love getting excited about great products like Mendelye! The last time I was this excited is when I discovered rss, flickr, gmail, movable type, Jetblue, crack (just checkin!), Dunkin Donuts, Shakor’s, and Obama. So get yourself on it!
flash ethnography: observations of a doctor’s use of mobile tech with a patient
I took my grandma to the doctors for her annual today. The doctor that we have been with for the last 5 years moved to another office. So today we had a new doctor. I gave the new doctor a brief overview of the last 5 years of my grandma’s medical history. Our new doctor was wonderful, personable, and attentive.
During the entire updating process, the doctor was primarily talking to me because I was translating and I have been the primary overseer of my grandma’s health for the last few years.
I noticed that she was carrying around a new netbook. She was typing my notes in the netbook while constantly referring back to my grandmother’s file that contained her entire medical history being various doctors.
I noticed that the entire time we talked, it was very hard for her to have any direct interaction with my grandma. Her back was faced towards her as the netbook was placed on a stationary built in counter. As she typed the notes, she looked at me and then would periodically turn her entire body around 360 around to smile at my grandma and then immediately turn back to her netbook.
When we were done with the exam, I chatted with the doctor for a few minutes about the netbooks. She said that the office was trialing these netbooks out and had rented them for 6 months. She seemed ambivalent about the netbook, as if it was forced upon her. She said,
“Well I can take it with me everywhere and look up notes on each patient, but the file of the patient’s history still isn’t on the laptop so we still have to pull up files and deal with a lot of papework. It just feels like another thing to carry around and keep track of.”
When I asked her how it affected her interaction with her patients, she said that this was her primary reason for not liking these laptops. She showed me that using the netbook meant that she had to spend more time with her back towards her patients. I asked her if she had tried sitting down and putting it in her lap so that she could face the patient, but she said that was also inconvenient because of all patient history paper file. She then want on to explain that she preferred the stationary big screen desktops on carts at her old office because it was on a table that could face the patient or be moved around within the room.
Post observation thoughts?
spatial layout of material objects matters
I think a big fix in the problem would be the way rooms are designed. Spatial layout of an office/room matters for the introduction of a new technology. Therefore, the reception and usage of a new technology, such as this netbook, will vary across different offices. And it’s cool to think about how even minute furniture and room layouts can make a difference.
In this instance, the only place for the doctor to place her netbook in such way that her physical paper files could also be accessed meant that her face-to-face time with her patient was compromised. Imagine if there was an extra cart in this room with a big computer screen and each doctor could plug in their own netbooks. Or imagine if all the stationary computers in each were networked so doctors didn’t have to keep track of their netbooks. This was a such a great learning moment for me in terms of witnessing how the consideration of spatial layout is especially salient for conducting comparisons in technology usage for a new tool across communities.
This reminds me of the time I spent working in the projects of the South Bronx. I had noticed that the layout of a small apartment that housed 4-8 people would’ve made it impossible for a student to use a desktop computer with broadband the same way as a student in larger apartment or home of middle-high income families.
the extent of digitization of info matters
the mobility of laptops were useful for accessing only recent notes because most of the files had yet to be scanned into computers. For all the promises that mobile tools deliver to professionals in service industries, it’s difficult to take full advantage of these tools when the entire information base of an organization has yet to be digitized. As the doctor had explained, she still had to rely on physical paper files for the patient history. The netbook was only useful for accessing recent visits. I wonder what she would’ve thought about the laptop if ALL patient histories was on it. Would she have sat down and put the netbook in her lap so that she could have more time with the patient?
human connection matters
decreased face-to-face time was the primary issue for the doctor. This was such a great example of when a technology appears to offer more mobility may work to compromise other forms of interactions that may be more valued in a certain social setting.
Mobility as a feature is neutral
There is a lot of excitement across HCI and CSCW for studies on mobilites and how digital tools can complement a more mobile lifestyle. Aside from my observation that most of these studies are on elite Western (usually Anglo) travelers or mobile workers and tend to undervalue informal economy workers who rely just as much on mobility - I think this is such an exciting area of research that has pushed me to bring the concept of mobility closer to lived practices of mobilities.
That being said, I think that it should not be considered a priori that mobility is a “good” or “desired” aspect of X. In the case of the doctor’s office, having a mobile laptop seemed to be novel technology that the doctor was obligated to carry around. Of course it was not an ideal office with patient history files still on paper format and badly designed patient rooms - but that is just the point. Rarely are technologies introduced into ideal or perfect settings. So it’s good to think more critically about the role of mobility for a specified audience and what mobility means to them. In this case, increased mobility of note taking and accessing for doctors compromised personal connections with their patients.
One of the ways I thought about this in the past was trying to think about the other end of mobile cellphones as mobility saviours - so what groups wouldn’t want to be as mobile - what situations would mobility as an option not be valued?
What came to my mind?
• cheating spouses who don’t want to be located
• paraplegics
• people who hate cellphones
yah ok this is a totally lame list - I couldn’t really come up with any other groups because I think my problem is that I live too much in a paradigm where mobility is valued and an absolute! I am one of those working professionals who travels a lot and would stop breathing if I didn’t have my cellphone or my laptop on a work day.
ok so here’s some things questions in conclusion:
• How do new technologies affect work flows?
• How do new technologies affect client/patient interaction?
• What are the compromises that are made for a more mobile lifestyle/interaction?
• How does spatial placement of objects affect technology usage?
Useful Links
• Microsoft Research on Health and Wellbing
Ethnography and Healthcare
• Multi-tasking in practice: Coordinated activities in the computer supported doctor–patient consultation. International Journal of Medical Informatics, Volume 74, Issue 6, Pages 425-436. M.Gibson, K.Jenkings, R.Wilson, I.Purves
• Clinician style and examination room computers: a video ethnography. W Ventres, R Marlin, N Vuckovic, V Stewart - Fam Med, 2005 - stfm.org.
• Mapping the integration of social and ethical issues in health technology assessment.
Lehoux P, Williams-Jones B. Int J Technol Assess Health Care. 2007 Winter;23(1):9-16.
• Making a Case in Medical Work: Implications for the Electronic Medical Record. M Hartswood, R Procter, M Rouncefield, R … - Computer Supported Cooperative Work, 2003 - portal.acm.org
I’m starting to think about how to visualize my data
I created this post on my other site, Digital Urbanisms (I just started it a few weeks ago). It’s about my current efforts to begin thinking about how to visualize my data - so it’s relevant for Cultural Bytes since this is where I talk about my research process.
Ever since I moved back to the US from China, I’ve been on a visualization craze - inspired by many of the architects and city planners that I met when I wasn’t doing fieldwork in Beijing.
What’s so great is that one of my advisors, Jim Hollan, actually teaches Information visualization!!! He introduced me to the world of Processing (visualization software). I think I should learn it - at least on some basic level in order to begin imaging how to visualize my data. Even though I want to work with a professional data visualizer, I still need to understand the depths of this software.
My reward for finishing my field exams in April is that I will be allowed to spend some time learning the program. I struggle EVERyday to not open the application. I don’t want to tell my committe that the reason why I dropped out of grad school is because I got stuck in processing world. hmmm I may have to uninstall it from my computer. yes good idea. going to do that……..now.
This post is not directly about Digital Urban Mapping - rather it’s a commentary about the state of data visualization in urban mapping. Mario Klingemann (Quasimondo), the creator of this image, made a statement that resonated with me. He notes that the current festish around data visualization may be more indicative of aesthetics being prioritized over data comprehension.
“The goals of data visualization as I understand them are to make complicated issues more understandable, to make obscured connections visible and to reveal hidden patterns in the data. After all these tasks have been solved ideally the result should be aesthetically pleasing as well.
But when I look around what is being done in data visualization today I have the suspicion that in many cases the design is more important than the actual information and that the use of data is more an excuse to justify the use of aesthetics.”
This makes me think about the world of visualization and digital mapping for visualizing urban processes. So far, my only experience with urban mapping has been with architects - professionals who tend to be great at visualizing cityscapes and not so great at observing and explaining human interaction. but hey more reasons for architects and sociologists to team up! One of the reasons why I want to work with architects is because I think sociologists are missing the imaginative, the scale, and the visual. A lot of our work gets stuck under so many theoretical barrels and methodological corners that to even begin to think about visualizing our data when we can’t even explain it in everyday language just seems overwhelming. And the very aspect that Mario brings up - about processing information - well I think that sociological studies overall (there are many exceptions) fail to really make the research understandable to a wider public.
I am afraid of my work falling into that trap as I feel that’s what graduate school has trained me to do - write in obscure language that doesn’t communicate with other disciplines or practitioners. So I’m realllly trying hard to make a commitment early on in my fieldwork to think about how to visually communicate my research.
The difficulties in visualization is that as visual objects they are excellent at showing the snapshot of situations, the state or the result or the change over time in X/Y variables. On the other foot, visuals are not as excellent at communicating processes or motivations - the cultural reasons for why X/Y happened or changed over time (more techniques are being developed to make this easier- that’s why processing is so awesome).
I wonder if all these trends towards data visualization is also a reflection of the information overload that we deal with in everyday life and a desire to just quickly get the facts and jump out before the nitty gritty details come in to overwhelm the moment. There are countless times when I’ve come across a looooooong article and I’m debating whether or not to read it and I then become really happy when I see a chart - even better when it’s a pretty chart! :) My brain just things - “get me the details - I don’t always need to know or have time to know why.”
Nothing bad can happen with trying to make data prettier right? Especially when it’s in the hands of people who care just as much about the data as the color palette.
You can read about his project here.
via @lennyjpg
