Don’t miss CindiTrainor’s newly revamped and newly retitled blog: Citegeist. She ponders some fascinating uses of Twitter and other tools for research in a recent post:
Say I am doing research with colleagues and find an article that should be included in the literature review section, when we get around to writing our article. Building on the FoxyTunes model, I would need a browser extension that can read citation information from a number of citation management sites as widely varying as EndNote Web, RefWorks, Reference Manager, Zotero, del.icio.us, or even a locally-created database, as long as there were a standard set of fields. Layer the OpenURL standard onto this extension and I suddenly have a way to link to nearly limitless related information, the first being the full text of the item itself, and other items by this author; other items with certain keywords; other articles from the same journal issue or title; frequency of citation of this article, author or journal; my local library holdings by this author, of this journal or on this topic. Those familiar with OpenURL link resolvers such as SFX will recognize that as a laundry list of many of the capabilities standard to those products. Add content made possible by Web 2.0, the Read/Write web, user-generated content–whatever label you want to use–my deli.cio.us bookmarks related to this research topic; blog posts about this author or topic; web search results for this author, journal or topic; the wikipedia entry for this author or topic. What about web-accessible information about the author him- or herself, such as videos posted to YouTube of recent presentations or podcasts of same? Photographs on flickr or screencasts on SlideShare created by the author? Here, I think we start to get a sense of an author as a human being rather than as a byline. How will this change the research process, if at all?
This perfectly points to the human factor that is becoming so important in what we do. Research – and many other forms of library use — are not only enhanced by this participatory upswing of features, technologies and channels for sharing, but I think the possibilities for learning are greatly improved as well. Watch Cindi’s blog closely, her voice is important.