Connotea - Jack of all trades but a master of just One!
When it comes to competition, a social bookmarking site does everything to make itself different from its contemporaries. And why not…its becoming harder than ever for them to make their presence felt in the cyber world. They all try a variety of things, but what works for them in a sure shot manner is ‘specialization’ and that too in a way that they cater to not everyone on this planet (that’s not humanly possible!) but target only a specific kind of audience. Being the master of all trades is not possible and being the jack of all trades won’t give any returns. So why not become a jack of all trades and a master of just one!
The Nature Publishing Group must have bound itself to the above statement while coming up with the idea of creating their own social bookmarking site. Its result was Connotea- ‘the’ social bookmarking site for scientists, researchers and medical librarians. However, one thing that should be noted at this point of time is that when this site claims to be serving the scholar part of the population, it does not mean that it does not serve the others. It simply has more a few more features to help the former. Take for example the metadata capabilities that it has or the fact that scientists, clinicians and the medical librarians are likely to find their peers and colleagues or people with same or similar interests…all these and more such features favour the scholar group more than any body else.
How Connotea functions
Getting started with Connotea is extremely easy. It takes the user hardly a few minutes to get himself/herself registered. Since no kind of downloading is needed, a user can just get on with bookmarking his/her favorite pages without wasting even an extra minute. The ‘browser button’ allows you to bookmark with a single click. And adding tags is also extremely easy. Moreover, single and multi word tags are also possible. As for the citation or the bibliographic details that you wish to add to your reference, Connotea would itself add this kind of information wherever possible, i.e. for recognized links.
Key features at a glance
· The references of each user can be accessed through any computer because they are all saved on the internet itself. All you simply need to do is to log into your account.
· Sharing references with your friends is just a matter of seconds. Just e-mail them the link of the pages that you wish them to see.
· You don’t need to switch programs while saving references.
· You can use any number of tags and save any number of references.
· It allows users to enter a digital object identifier (DOI) number to instantly bookmark the corresponding full-text article as well.
This one is a typical bookmarking site and offers the same thing to you that even the others also offer. But if you are one of those looking out of science literature and related stuff… there is no other better place for you than Connotea.