The second, and arguably the most awesome tool new to Mendeley is.... Me!
(Tool? Get it? I'm so punny!)
I was waiting for this to be posted on the Mendeley blog before saying anything, but I will be joining the Mendeley team as a Community Liaison. Victor Henning and I came up with the idea when we met for coffee during his US east coast tour. We thought that designing a reference managing program/system should really be driven by the potential users, and that this was almost a full time job in itself. Like most problems, this one could be solved with minions. Or 'Mendions', if you prefer.
What does this mean to you, dear readers?
1) First, yes I will be mentioning cool Mendeley items. And yes, I am a paid consultant, so, depending on how you want to see it, I am a little biased. BUT...
2) I am working with Mendeley because I think the program has significant potential and the folks there have the vision, resources, and talent to do great things. Also, I can't believe that after leaving academia in 2001, I came back in 2005 to find almost no change in the tools for managing information. Seriously, EndNote looks the exact same as when I used it on my Power Mac 9500/120 running System 7. Sad.
3) My job is not to 'sell'. My job is to get feedback from users, librarians, and labs on how to make Mendeley work the way they do. There is a nice feedback and bug reporting system in place, so the Community Liaisons are more the 'big picture' folks and web presence crew. Yes, we'll be 'promoting' the program and web service but, like I said, I'm doing this because I do think it's a great program. So, if you have any insights you can provide, check the feedback system (it's very easy to use) and let me of any other the other CLs know! If you think I'm being unfair or too 'rah-rah', call me on it.
I'm really excited about this, and after dealing with all the papers and other literature I've amassed with my thesis project and DNI, I have a vested interest in helping make Mendeley awesome.
2 comments:
Congratulations Brandon,
I'm pretty new to Mendeley but got so frustrated with endnote that i was going to program my own reference manager. Mendeley is pretty tight, and much more appealing...
Glad you like it. I still can't use it as a total reference solution because of some of the bugs, but it is really improving very quickly. I think once the PMID and DOI queries get a little better, I'll be able to move everything to it. Hey, v.6 - what do you expect? Firefox couldn't even render its own project page at that version!
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