Schlagwort-Archive: Social Networks

Zotero 2.0 now available

zotero

Zotero 2.0 became available for public download on May 14. This new version of Zotero provides many exciting features that unlock the research archives of individual scholars making those research archives (or portions of those archives) available for a wider audience. Think about it this way. In what my students like to call the „olden times“ (anything before 2000), scholars collected materials into their personal research archives then sat down and wrote a book, an article, or a conference paper. That publication provided the scholar’s audience with a glimpse into the source materials he or she had collected from various archives, libraries, etc. But only a glimpse, and mostly in the footnotes. If you wanted access to those same sources, you had to replicate the research already completed by the author of what you were reading.

Zotero 2.0 potentially puts an end to this re-research process. Now, a scholar can make any portion of that personal research archive available online via Zotero’s collaborative capabilities. So, for instance, as I collect materials for an article I am perparing for a volume of essays on „getaways“ in communist Eastern Europe, I can make my Zotero folders available to anyone or just my collaborators in the volume. Once the book is published, I can choose whether or not to make my sources available to those readers who want to work with the sources I collected. In this way, the „hidden archive“ of scholarship will begin to migrate to the surface. The potential for transformation of scholarly work is, I think, quite significant.

Zotero 2.0 also taps into the potentialities of social networking for scholars. Once logged in to the Zotero server, one can create a personal profile page, create or join affinity groups, and track („follow“) the work of others who are part of the Zotero community. For a brief summary of the features of Zotero 2.0, read what Dan Cohen, Director of the Center for History and New Media, has written (and will continue to write) in his blog.

web 2.0: Überblick

webware 100

Wer sich einen Überblick darüber verschaffen will, was eigentlich mit „web 2.0“ alles gemeint ist, kriegt bei der Zusammenstellung der 100 besten Web-Anwendungen bei Webware („We know because you told us“) eine gute Gelegenheit dazu. Neben Klassikern wie Web-Browsern und Suchmaschinen kommen auch weitere „usual suspects“ zum Zuge: Google Docs, Flickr, YouTube, WordPress (mit dem auch unser Weblog läuft), Wikipedia. Daneben sind aber (jedenfalls hierzulande) noch nicht ganz so bekannte Dienste zu finden wie unter anderen Bebo, Facebook, Wikia, BitTorrent und Feeburner oder eher kleinere wie Silverlight, Mundu-Radio, Pandora, Chacha oder Geni. Die Dienste werden immer kurz erklärt und ermöglichen einen schnellen Einblick in die Welt des Web 2.0 im Jahre 2007 – denn schon nächstes Jahr wird es wohl viele Dienste dieser Liste nicht mehr geben…

Passend dazu die Meldung bei Newscom, wonach immer mehr Anbieter von Online-Communities auch in der realen Welt Treffen ihrer Mitglieder organisieren und damit versuchen, der (geschäftsschädigenden) Schnelllebigkeit von digitalen sozialen Netzwerken entgegen zu wirken.