Organizing Scientific Information with Mendeley^© software

                             (Workshop Proposal by Carlos A. Almenara)



Overview

The main goal of this workshop is to provide students the knowledge and skills necessary to
efficiently organize and retrieve information using Mendeley^© software.

During the research process, the next step after finding information, is organize it. In this
digital era, our skills to efficiently find information need to be different from those of the
print era (Tuominen, 2007). The same applies to the subsequent process of organization of that
information. Furthermore, one of the central competencies of digital literacy (i.e. the ability to
understand information), is “knowledge assembly” which is only possible by building a reliable
collection of information from diverse sources (Bawden, 2008). Today, it’s possible to do that
using software.

Mendeley^© is a free reference manager software useful to organize as a database a large amount of
citations from articles, books, book chapters, encyclopedia entries, etc. You can instantly and
automatically create a bibliography (e.g. in Microsoft Word) using any citation style like the
Chicago Manual of Style, Modern Language Association, American Sociological Association, American
Psychologist Association (6^th edition), etc. Furthermore, you actually don’t need to organize the
files in your computer, since Mendeley^© directly import your PDF files from a folder selected by
you. On the other hand, you can search in your database and all the information could be
synchronized with other devices like smart phones, tablets, and other computers, giving you the
opportunity to carry with your database everywhere. Finally, you can share the information with
other people, giving you the possibility to collaborate with a group (there are over 70,000 groups)
in the creation of special bibliographies or just share with others new articles, book chapters,
and new bibliography in general. For more Mendeley^© features and compare with other software go
to:

 http://www.mendeley.com/features/



Skills and knowledge to be developed:

By the end of the workshop, the participants will be able to:

·         Acquire basic knowledge on the different citation styles.

·         Use their basic knowledge of citation styles in the process of data input (importing new
references in Mendeley© database).

·         Identify the principal components of an article: title, authors, abstract, keywords, DOI.

·         Critically think before selecting and using TAGS for future retrieval.

·         Organize the information with folders, TAGS.

·         Import references from other databases (EndNote, Zotero, etc.)

·         Search in the database.

·         Advanced search in the database using TAGS, folders, author’s name.

·         Use Mendeley© while writing in Microsoft Word.

·         Synchronize their database with other devices (smart phones, tablets, etc.)

·         Be encouraged to start a new Mendeley^© group and share information.


Intended Participants (Audience)

This workshop is suitable to:

·         Any student or professional who works with academic literature.

·         Specifically, those who need a time-saving tool to organize and easily retrieve the
information.


Materials (logistics)

·         Computers with internet connection and the option to install and use Mendeley^©

·         A projector device and projector screen.

·         Whiteboard and markers.


Facilitator’s contact details

Name:                                  Carlos A. Almenara

Organization:                     Masaryk University Joštova 218/10 (Kancelář 2.53) 602 00 Brno,
Czech Republic

Phone:                                 (+42) 549 49 49 72

Email:                                    carlos.almenara@mail.muni.cz



References


Bawden, D. (2008). Origins and concepts of digital literacy. In C. Lankshear & M. Knobel (Eds.),
Digital literacies: Concepts, policies, and practices (pp. 17–32). New York, NY: Peter Lang
Publishing.


Huvila, I. (2011). The complete information literacy? Unforgetting creation and organization of
information. Journal of Librarianship and Information Science, 43(4), 237–245.
doi:10.1177/0961000611418812


Tuominen, K. (2007). Information literacy 2.0. Signum, 5, 6–12.