Dental Information & Library Innovation

Links About Stephen Hawking's Question: http://del.icio.us/dentlib/hawking.stephen

In today's blog entry, we will explore some of the tools being used by scientists and researchers to share research resources (including citations) and create common information tools.

* FOLKSONOMY & COMMUNITY TOOLS

Folksonomy tools are the kind described above, allowing a community of people with shared interests to share resources, citations, and information they have found, and to comment on what they or others have discovered. Three of the most popular folksonomy tools for researchers include Connotea, CiteULike and Del.icio.us.

Connotea (Nature): http://www.connotea.org/

CiteULike: http://www.citeulike.org/

Del.icio.us: http://del.icio.us/

Each of these free resources allows individuals to create their own account and track or capture information they've found, keeping the links or information handy online. This means it is accessible from home, work, school, conferences, or other places, as long as you have an Internet connection and a web browser. Connotea and CiteULike are both intended primarily for capturing citations / articles. Del.icio.us is primarily used for capturing bookmarks / webpages. With Del.icio.us you can import and export bookmarks from any computer you use, allowing you to create a master set of bookmarks available on any computer you use.

With all of these systems, people usually add descriptive comments and/or "tags". Tags are subject terms that you choose to describe the item. You can then click on a tag and see every item that shares the same tag. Some individuals have become rather well-known for their collections of resources on a specific topic. Vannevar Bush would have called these people "trailblazers." Here are two exmples of persons respected for their omics collections.

Del.icio.us: RPiquepa: Nanotechnology: http://del.icio.us/rpiquepa/Nanotechnology

CiteULike: TimyU: Genomics: http://www.citeulike.org/user/timyu/tag/genomics

Another great way to explore collections without having to know who is collecting is simply to browse by tag. All three of today's tools use similar formats for the URLs for browsing by tag (a.k.a. subject heading). You can guess what might be a tag, and then see if anyone else is using it, and what they have discovered. Items are usually displayed with the most recently added items on top, and older items toward the far end of the list. You can use these examples of URLs for browse-by-tag, and edit the end of the web address for the term you want to use. Usually capitalization doesn't make a difference, but you may want to try a word both ways just to be sure.

CiteULike: Tag: Bioinformatics: http://www.citeulike.org/tag/bioinformatics

Connotea (Nature): Tag; Proteomics: http://www.connotea.org/tag/proteomics

Del.icio.us: Tag: Genomics: http://del.icio.us/tag/genomics

When browsing by tag, if you noticed a person who seems to be collecting a lot of items or resources that interest you, you may want to browse that person's collection. You can usually do this by either clicking on the person's name or account. If accounts are not listed, you can sometimes discover who it is that collected an item by clicking on a text link that says something like "saved by 10 other people".

In any case, the various folksonomy tools can become a tool of inestimable value in staying current and discovering new resources and articles in your area of interest.

* WIKIS

The folksonomy tools like CiteULike, Connotea, and Del.icio.us all allow you personal control over your collections and information. Another approach are wikis, which are true communal efforts. In a wiki, for example Wikipedia, a community collectively edit information resources on a topic of shared interest. For Wikipedia, the community is very large, potentially open to the world. Many other wikis are less open, and may be restricted to members of an association, or to a particular research lab or other administrative unit, or however else a community defines itself. Some wikis are viewable by the world, but can only be edited by the "insiders" for that community, while others restrict both viewing and editing. Here are some examples of wikis available to persons interested in omics.

Bio-Pedia, an openfree bioinformation encyclopedia: http://biocc.ngic.re.kr/Biopedia/Biowiki/index.php/Main_Page

BioWiki: http://biowiki.org/BioWikis

BiWiki: Bingen Bioinformatics Wiki: http://biwiki.fh-bingen.de/biwiki

Evolving Code Wiki: http://www.evolvingcode.net/index.php

Fred Hutchinson Computational Proteomics Laboratory (CPL) Proteomics Repository: https://proteomics.fhcrc.org/CPAS/Project/home/home.view

GUS: The Genomics Unified Schema: http://www.gusdb.org/wiki

Molecular Station: Molecular Biology Encyclopedia: Molecular Wiki: http://wiki.molecularstation.com/

nodalpoint [nodalpoint wiki] (bioinformatics): http://wiki.nodalpoint.org/

Omics Wiki: http://biocc.ngic.re.kr/Omics/Mediawiki/index.php/Main_Page

Open Bioinformatics Foundation (OBF): http://www.open-bio.org/wiki/Main_Page

Proteomics Wiki (subscription required) [German/English]: http://elbanet.ethz.ch/wikifarm/proteomics/

Wesleyan's Genomics Wiki Web: http://twiki.wesleyan.edu/cgi-bin/view/Genomics/WebHome

Wikiomics Bioinformatics Wiki: http://wikiomics.org

Wise-Nano Project: http://wise-nano.org/w/Main_Page