The librarian changed my life today

I received this in an email:

Remember the days of overflowing file cabinets filled with reprints and photocopied articles? Today many computers are now crammed with article PDFs. There are a number of software solutions for managing PDFs on your computer, or creating stable links to online articles. Since it is not possible to describe every program or approach, this message gives you a few ideas help you solve this problem.

Desktop PDF Management Applications

iPapers - http://ipapers.sourceforge.net/iPapers.html (MAC only) iPapers lets you download PDFs from PubMed, and captures the author, journal, abstract and other citation information at the same time. It also lets you add non-PubMed and supplemental items. You can drag and drop existing PDFs into iPapers. Free.

Papers - http://mekentosj.com/papers/ (MAC only) “Papers” allows you to import, download, organize, and read your PDFs on your computer. PDFs already on your computer may be dragged and dropped into Papers. PubMed and other article search engines can be searched from within Papers, and PDFs can be easily downloaded. Metadata for articles (authors, journal name, etc.) can be obtained from PubMed, Google Scholar, and other sources, and matched with imported PDFs. PDFs can also be organized by subjects (called collections) and additional notes added. Desktop license costs $42.00.

Yep - http://www.yepthat.com/yep/index.html (MAC only) Think “iTunes for PDFs.” Yep scans your hard drive for PDFs, tagging the ones it finds, or allowing you to create your own tags. Desktop license costs $34.00. (Tip: You can also use iTunes to manage small to medium PDF collections.)

QUOSA - http://quosa.com/ (MAC/PC) You can search PubMed and Google Scholar from within QUOSA and then download the PDFs you want and save them on your computer. You can also export article metadata and links to PDFs to EndNote and other bibliographic management software. Further information on Quosa is available at http://www.lib.berkeley.edu/BIOS/quosa.html#starting; the download page is at http://www.quosa.com/downloads.php. The Library licenses Quosa for UCB students, faculty & staff.

EndNote - http://www.endnote.com (MAC/PC) Users of the desktop version of EndNote can link to PDFs on their computer, or embed PDFs within the EndNote library. Then you can use EndNote to search for the references you want, and open the associated PDFs. The Scholar's Workstation price for Endnote XI is $69.99. If you are considering the purchase of EndNote, I recommend waiting until the end of August, when a new version is usually released.


Free Web Tools That Link to Online Content

RefWorks – http://www.refworks.com/refworks RefWorks is a web-based tool that is similar to EndNote. Refworks allows you to store documents including PDFs, up to 100 MB per account. It is linked from CSA databases (e.g., PsycINFO, Sociological Abstracts). The Library licenses RefWorks for UCB students, faculty & staff.

CiteULike - http://www.citeulike.org/ CiteULike helps you organize and share the scholarly papers you are reading. When you see a paper on the web that interests you, you can automatically add the reference to your personal library, with the link to the online article retained. You can also upload the PDF, if you have it. It all works from within your web browser and your references and PDFs are stored on the CiteULike server, so there is no need to install any software. CiteULike references also include the orange UCeLinks icons that allow you to link to the online article if UCB subscribes, check to see if the article is in one of the UCB libraries, or request it on interlibrary loan.

Connotea - http://www.connotea.org/ Connotea allows you to save links to any page on the web. On certain sites, including PubMed and many journals, Connotea recognizes the citation details and saves them for you. Even if Connotea does not automatically import bibliographic information for all the websites you use, you can still save and share links to those pages. You can also assign tags to your entries, see what others have added to Connotea, search part or all of Connotea, and see related articles. References include UCeLinks links.

Zotero - http://www.zotero.org/ Zotero is a Firefox extension that helps you gather, store, and organize citations, PDFs, web pages, images, etc. It automatically stores author, title, and publication information and lets you export that information as formatted references. It also allows you to easily save PDFs to your computer. Zotero runs on your personal computer and works with Microsoft Word. It can be used offline as well (e.g., on a plane, in an archive without WiFi). In 2008, Zotero users will be able to share their collections through an exchange server, and receive recommendations and feeds of new resources that might be of interest to them. People considering purchasing EndNote or RefWorks might want to consider Zotero, a robust tool with many features. It has limited output styles.