Dear listers,
apologies for my recent sloppy posting. My previous communication to Terry wasn't meant to be sent to everyone. But to expand on this random post and align it to the point I think teena might be making, as well as to the recent literacy string, I'd like to offer my perspective on Endnote. I think of it as a very individualized technology that supports a type of disciplinary power which may be losing its hold on the university.
I like Endnote. I find it admirably fulfills my needs as a researcher and my students also find it useful. As an example, I just now accessed 782 bibliographic references from my endnote library which explicitly address my research interest in design education. I've annotated nearly all of these articles, books, papers etc (meaning I have actually read them!) Many are pdfs so I can access them instantly. I often scan parts of books or other documents, all of which I can then retrieve through endnote. My main endnote library has thousands of entries. I like the feeling I can keep my brain relatively uncluttered and still find what I need when I need it. I'm sure other bibliographic technologies serve this housekeeping function just as well. As many on this list probably agree, the university has been anchored in this type of literary scholarship - now immeasurably enhanced through productivity tools such as Endnote ( I could never have referred to 782 texts on design education without it).
However, to develop these private and scholarly databases into reviews of literature, which then contribute to a discipline, requires resources (valuable time and authority). Few of us manage to secure those resources. By contrast, social networking has raised the profile of many design academics, and supplied funding for their research projects much more effectively than years of endnoted interrogation of design canons. This seems to bear out the idea of Gibbons et al (1994), that new cultures of knowledge are socially distributed and produced in the context of markets, rather than being concentrated within traditional university boundaries.
Perhaps mendeley is best viewed as an attempt to bridge these different types of knowledge? The question I'd like to ask this list is whether its possible to design a scholarly, rigorous approach to socially networked knowledge production? Or is this now an oxymoron?
Best regards,
Amanda
Ref.
Gibbons, M., Limoges, C., Nowotny, H., Schwartzman, S., Scott, P., & Trow, M. (1994). The New Production Of Knowledge: The Dynamics Of Science And Research In Contemporary Societies. London, Thousand Oaks: Sage.
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Dr Amanda Bill
Institute of Design for Industry and Environment
College of Creative Arts
Massey University, Wellington
New Zealand
+64 4 8012794 ext 6886
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