<$BlogRSDUrl$> Marcus P. Zillman, M.S., A.M.H.A. Author/Speaker/Consultant
Marcus P. Zillman, M.S., A.M.H.A. Author/Speaker/Consultant
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Tuesday, December 21, 2004  


Research Buddy!

Research Buddy - Saves References To WebPages in Bibliographical Reference Form
http://researchbuddy.mozdev.org/

Research Buddy saves references to webpages in a bibliographical reference form. The extension is designed to be used in the following way: 1) The user finds a quote on a webpage and wants to reference the quote in his/her paper, 2) The user selects the text of this quote, and, in the right-click menu, selects "Research Buddy" (this step is optional: the page can be referenced without selected text), 3) The plugin opens the main Research Buddy dialog, which allows the user to select which research topic the page should be filed under, and 4) The user clicks on "Add to selected topic", and the reference is saved to the topic. Depending on the preferences, the page (and it's images) may be saved to the user's disk. Users can also add new topics, delete old topics, rename topics, and view the bibliography for a topic. The Research Buddy preferences allow the user to configure the behavior of the plugin. Preferences are stored in a file, so they persist between web sessions: a) Bibliography format string (defaults to a generic reference string, b) Root directory to store pages in (set to the mozilla profile directory by default), c) Save the html of the referenced page (this is useful for ensuring access to the content regardless of the availability of the website. on by default, d) Save the images on the referenced page (useful for pages where content is at least partially contained in images. off by default to save disk space), e) Many bibliography strings will require an "Author" field. Due to the difficulty of accurately finding the author of a given webpage, they decided that this task be left up to the user, and f) The citations are stored in xml format, and an html file is only generated when the user clicks on "View Topic". This has been added to the tool section of Research Resources Subject Tracer™ Information Blog and added to Student Resources Subject Tracer™ Information Blog.

posted by Marcus Zillman | 4:25 AM
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