p2p news / p2pnet: Researchers at George Mason University are working on a new open source application meant to help users organize and cite materials they’ve found online.

Called Firefox Scholar, it’s “incredibly smart bookmarking,” the Chronicle of Higher Education has Daniel J. Cohen, an assistant professor of history at George Mason who is working on the project, saying.

“You’re not just bookmarking the page, but you’re automatically [capturing] author, title, all that info that scholars want to save.”

Commercial software for organizing citations is already available but Firefox Scholar would bring that function directly into the browser, says Cohen.

“For the browser-based software to work fully, however, digital archives must format their books and articles in a way that lets it sort out where elements like title, author, and other bibliographic information reside. Some digital collections already do that, and others could make minor adjustments to comply,” he says, says, states the story, adding:

“Roy Rosenzweig, a professor of history and new media at the university, says the new browser would also allow researchers to automatically save a copy of an online article or Web page and make annotations on those saved pages. That’s better than a shoebox full of notecards and photocopied articles, says Mr. Rosenzweig.”

The project recently received a $250,000 grant from the federal government’s Institute of Museum and Library Services. A beta version is expected by summer or later next year.

Also read:-
Chronicle of Higher Education - Browser-Based Software Will Help Scholars Organize Information Found Online, Researchers Say, December 6, 2005

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