Dear Chuck,
I understand your feeling, and I am sorry for coming out with the critique at a time when it would be nice to get some action going. But I just wanted to voice my concerns, as I think they are something for all academics to think seriously about (and hopefully push their institutions to try to solve - as by putting together their resources in an open development, they surely can solve the problem).
Our field is not alone: even though design research is a small field, every scholarly field has exactly the same problem as we do - we could all use the same system and have the software divide all materials into those needed by any field or any obscure inter-, multi- or transdisciplinary configuration we could imagine. But, there needs to be the demand, and a conviction that existing solutions are not enough.
So I believe all experimentation is good, with any tools that are available, to figure out what is actually needed, but in the end the solution should come from a completely open development. Unfortunately I can not at this time be of great help otherwise, as I am completely tied up with something else right now :(
However, looking at (somewhat superficially, I am afraid) the various tools available, and considering what you are probably aiming at, it might be that Zotero could be the open alternative to Academia.com that would be worth considering at the moment. It is developed as open source software and hosted by a non-commercial entity that may be more attentive to legitimate concerns and not likely to be exploiting the work of contributors.
They have some kind of Group feature that lets people share libraries (of materials or references). Unfortunately I have not yet tried Zotero myself, so I can not say anything about how it works in reality. All of these systems tend to work best when you integrate them deeply within your practices, and it takes a lot of effort to do that.....and then you tend to become locked into the tool you choose, so the threshold of realistic experimenting is quite high. Would it be possible to use it "lightly" by our community, I don't know - someone might have that experience to share with us.
Overview of reference mgmt software (that contain the building blocks for software managed bibliographies):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_reference_management_software
Zotero, general info, and more about Zotero groups:
http://www.zotero.org/
http://www.zotero.org/support/groups
Bg information about its developer:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Center_for_History_and_New_Media
cheers, Kari-Hans
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On Feb 14, 2013, at 6:48 PM, Charles Burnette wrote:
> Ken, Terry, and Colleagues
>
> I'm beginning to wonder if Terry is the only one on the list with a positive, entrepreneurial attitude to the problem of developing a portal for the field around design related bibliographies. (I obviously don't believe that - Kari-Hans has charted a critical but responsive course and others have suggested other tools to consider.)
>
> Despite some wonderful contributions to the discussion, I am disappointed in the "can't do anything yet but use what is there' attitude and a seemingly limited inability to build on ideas positively as knowledge is added, rather than simply to misconstrue and derail them.
>
> For example, Ken has spent a lot of time saying what he doesn't believe can be done (even as he begins to do and test what he sees opportunistically as doable.) His misconstructions of what I suggest are so frequent and negative that it is tiring. Ideas I didn't propose, like annotated bibliographies and peer reviewed bibliographies, became ways to beat down what was actually proposed. (Ken also introduced the word "thematic" where I would use the word "contextualized".)
>
> Terry's great reality check suggests that where annotated bibliographies exist they too could be reached from the database without having to author or edit them. If we feel as I do that design is a universal discipline then use of the word in a title marks it as relevant even if not for every situation or search. If one takes the modern view that users should determine what is useful to them, and their use can be mined to reveal keyword use, abstracts viewed, and citations downloaded to help them focus their search, rather than restrict content to what authority figures decide should be useful, then the issue turns to more manageable things like funding, planning, hosting, components, format regulation or translation, ease of use, and effectiveness for whatever purposes the database might serve. Those are topics worth considering along with critical analysis of what is already out there.
>
> Can't everyone become a bit more positive, entrepreneurial and designerly rather than critical and contentious?
>
> It would be more productive with a better chance of improving access to information and knowledge related to design..
>
> Or, so I believe,
> Chuck
>
>
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