Capturing information

Abstract:

Not all academic research relies on the capture of formal, scholarly material from books and electronic collections. Many researchers also need to capture non-scholarly content. This type of content can be more challenging to work with, in that the metadata is often less complete than is seen in formal works. Also, the high volume of non-scholarly material can be challenging to address. This chapter will discuss ways to capture and organize non-scholarly web-based material, covering simple, cloud-based bookmarking services such as Pinboard and Delicious, more robust capture tools such as Diigo, Evernote, Springpad, and OneNote, and postponed reading services, which allow users to quickly and easily mark something to be read later, but be accessible across a variety of devices. The chapter will also discuss ways to sync local browser-based bookmarks.

Key words

bookmark

Delicious

Diigo

EverNote

OneNote

Pinboard

postponed reading

Springpad

Xmarks

The reality of contemporary research for many faculty is that it takes place within a web browser. The research process begins with gathering all data related to the project, such as submission guidelines, information on citation formats, and perhaps some web guides on where to look for research.

These kinds of materials are very much related to the development of an academic work, but are not themselves scholarly. For a myriad of reasons, non-scholarly sources like these need to be captured to facilitate retrieval at a later date.

This is not a new problem. The birth of the web browser was followed almost immediately by the birth of the bookmark, with bookmarks giving users a way to save URLs they might want to visit at a later date. The challenge of bookmarks is that they live on a local computer and within a particular browser. If a user bookmarks a page in Internet Explorer, they will not have access to that bookmark within Safari, unless they also bookmark the same page in Safari. If a page is bookmarked at home, the bookmark will not show up on a work computer.

Bookmarking also does not capture much metadata from a page. Most browser bookmarks simply capture a web address and the page title, without providing a way for the information to be annotated. This too can be limiting for users, especially ones who want to provide context or an explanation for whatever it was they just bookmarked.

This chapter will discuss cloud-based tools designed to facilitate the capture of non-scholarly web-based content (the capture of scholarly content is discussed in Chapter 3). The advantage of all of the cloud-based capture tools discussed in this chapter is that they allow users to have access to their bookmarks and annotations from just about any Internet-enabled device. This can be quite helpful when considering the ramifications of an important link or note being trapped in the browser of a machine a user cannot access, such as an office machine when someone is away on vacation or a home machine when someone is at work. Constant access to bookmarks does not seem important until it is needed. Then, it suddenly becomes a very important feature. For instance, author manuscript preparation instructions are often hidden deeply within publisher websites. If a user is trying to finish a manuscript, they might not want to spend time going through old emails and searching through a site. They probably want quicker access to the content in order to find what they need, rather than searching for what they need.

Delicious

Delicious (www.delicious.com) was one of the first cloud-hosted bookmarking services. Its concept is simple. Users use the Delicious web interface to bookmark sites, assigning tags and a brief description (Figure 2.1). The concept behind Delicious has not changed, but the company itself has seen some dramatic ups and downs that are worth mentioning only because they speak to the potential long-term viability of the company.

Figure 2.1 Delicious

Founded in 2003, the company was sold to Yahoo! in 2005, but was never truly integrated into Yahoo!'s portfolio of services. Rumors swirled that Yahoo! was about to shutter the service. In December 2010, it was sold to Chad Hurley and Steve Chen, two of the founders of YouTube (Wortham, 2011).

Despite the turbulence behind the scenes, Delicious continues to exist as a bookmarking service. After creating a Delicious account, users install a browser-based bookmarklet or browser extension. When users are on a page they want to bookmark, they click the button and are presented with a dialogue allowing them to annotate the page and tag it. Tags are user-generated subject headings designed to help users retrieve the bookmark at a later date and to allow them to organize bookmarks in a meaningful way. Delicious bookmarks are cloud-based, so they can be retrieved by visiting the Delicious website. With bookmarks centrally saved in the cloud, users have the same access to all of their bookmarks across machines and devices (the Delicious site is available from any web-enabled device; there is also a Delicious bookmarklet for iOS and third-party Delicious clients for Android).

Mobile devices are a space where a bookmarking service can be very convenient. Many users are not in the habit of bookmarking links, as it is often convenient enough to rediscover a link from a desktop computer. Email messages can be searched and search engines can be used until the right link is eventually discovered. But on a mobile device, where bandwidth might be a concern, where connectivity could be inconsistent, and where typing is not always easy, users might want a more direct path to the bookmarks they need. A bookmarking service like Delicious allows users to navigate to a single site and find the bookmark needed, either by tag or by keyword searching captured bookmarks.

Delicious has a relatively new feature called Stacks. This feature allows users to create a page of curated links and images around a single topic. The page can be public or private and other users can be invited to contribute. Users gathering web-based material around a certain topic might see value in making their research publicly available in an easily digestible, annotated way, which is where something like Stacks might come in handy. Sharing content is also discussed in Chapter 8.

Delicious is a simple way to keep track of research found online. But given its volatile history, there are some concerns about its long-term viability as a service. However, Delicious allows users to export their links as a simple HTML file, with users having the option of including their notes and tags, meaning if a user spent a lot of time gathering, tagging, and annotating links, they would still have access to their work as long as they had exported the backup file.

Like many of the services discussed in this book, Delicious has a social component where users can follow other users, seeing what others are bookmarking. Users can also configure Delicious to automatically save links sent from a user's Twitter account. Delicious is a free-of-charge service.

Pinboard

Pinboard (www.pinboard.in) is another bookmarking site Figure 2.2). It positions itself as a more robust, viable form of the Delicious service (Pinboard, n.d.). Pinboard does everything Delicious does, except for allowing users to create Stacks. This makes sense, as Pinboard bills itself as "social bookmarking for introverts." That description is not quite fair, though, as, like Delicious, Pinboard does have a social component that allows users to follow other users, seeing what bookmarks they have made publicly available.

Figure 2.2 Pinboard

Like Delicious, Pinboard also allows users to hook into other social networks and services. In the case of Pinboard, there are quite a few options. Users can configure Pinboard to autopost links from Instapaper, Readability, and Pocket (Pinboard also has its own Read later option, see "Postponed reading services" later in this chapter), and even Delicious. That means pages captured using those services will be simultaneously and automatically captured by Pinboard. Like Delicious, Pinboard will also grab links posted on up to three Twitter accounts (like Delicious, the user must own the Twitter accounts). This allows users to make Pinboard a hub for all of their online bookmarking, without even necessarily using Pinboard to natively capture content. This allows users to play with disparate capture services without worrying about having to eventually unify what is being captured. As long as a user is working with a supported service, Pinboard should capture the content. Pinboard also allows users to email links to Pinboard, using a custom email address.

Like Delicious, Pinboard allows users to export their bookmarks as an HTML file. Pinboard also supports bookmark exports into XML and JSON, which are both flexible data formats.

There is no official Pinboard mobile client, although there are third-party clients available for mobile devices. Pinboard also has a mobile interface available at...