Dear Brunella hi,
I understand your reservation towards solutions like Mendeley. I just said
my opinion as an end-user. Also I noticed that their feedback is not as
efficient and as effecting as they should have, as well as their academic
advisory program is rather slow. To sum up, I get the impression that
there
were not expecting to reach these heights so soon, and this shows that, as
an enterprize, they have a long road to tread.
But as a librarian responsible for bibliographic management software, I
would like to have a feedback - mainly - by English libraries, which seem
to be one of the first markets they target. Currently, there are no
information in their site about institution-wide programs and the
experience that any LIS-LINK member has, would be helpful to us.
Sustainability is of course an issue, but Mendeley, Zotero or anything
else have the ability to address in person to individual members of our
communities, something that other solutions, like EndNote or RefWorks
don't, as they seem to work on an institutional base. What I want to say
is
that open solutions like this are already into our communities and we need
to see if it is of mutual benefit (for us and our community) to adopt this
kind of options.
With kind regards
Giannis
On Thu, 9 Sep 2010 12:16:11 +0000, Brunella Longo
<[log in to unmask]> wrote:
Dear Giannis Thank you very much for this extremely useful peace of
insight coming from the beautiful context of Greece. How many would like to
be there! I am glad you are experimenting new citation services but I must
say I disagree with you. I would avoid solutions where the business model
is evidently more keen on attracting advertising revenues than providing a
sustainable service in the long term. I deeply regret having
light-heartedly supported Mendeley through Cilip Communities one year ago
saying I liked his sexy jokes - I was referring to some tweets exchanged
with some other Twitter users and particularly with one young manager from
Elsevier. I did it because I think that young entrepreneurs and managers
must be encouraged, having experienced myself how difficult can be starting
new services with everybody against new ideas just because you are
"twenty-something".
But as a matter of fact, one year later, and having attendend last
week the conference Science Online London that Mendeley co-sponsored, it
seems clear to me they are not only "in beta" technically speaking. Theirs
behaviours, the entire way in which they do business is long way off to
become... alpha
-
that it is what libraries need to consider in my opinion. I am very
sorry if somebody had thought I had endorsed them. I was enjoying my Cilip
Chartership year. Blame it on my youth :) Brunella Longo
http://www.brunellalongo.info ----- Original Message ----
From: Giannis Tsakonas <[log in to unmask]> To:
[log in to unmask] Sent: Fri, 3 September, 2010 11:27:30 Subject: Re:
from ref managers to Mendeley Dear all , summarizing the few responses that
I got, it seems that institutions are quit hesitant towards such solutions.
One institution is preferring Zotero, as a more stable solution (since
Mendeley is still in beta). Nothing more
was
added, so I guess that those that are interested are waiting to
see if
Mendeley
can prove a mature and reliable solution (like I do). My personal
opinion, as a user of Mendeley, is good. It has some end user problems, but
my essence is that they are working quite slow to solve them. Thankfully,
these are minor problems and I am satisfied with how it works (on Mac). But
I don't know if I can propose it to our users, especially
when
a significant number of them has invested a lot of effort and time
in our the solution we subscribe to. Thank you for your answers and
interest and I'll be glad to know if anyone has any news on this subject.
With kind regards Giannis Giannis Tsakonas, PhD Library & Information
Center University of Patras Patras, Greece [log in to unmask]
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