Delivered as part of the University of Liverpool Library's researcher training programme.

1. Tools to combat
information overload:
keeping up-to-date and
keeping on top of things
Martin Wolf
2016-02-24

2. What we’ll cover today
Ways of keeping up-to-date and managing the
information you find, including:
• Tools for keeping up-to-date and getting relevant
alerts
• Tools for document storage, management and use
• Techniques for effective file management

3. A word of warning …
 This is a war you cannot win!
 You have to decide for yourself how strict your
information filters should be

4. Ways of keeping up-to-date
RSS and portal sites
 RSS is a way of subscribing to online material that
gets updated
 Portal sites (or RSS readers) are ways of bringing lots
of different information sources together in one place
 There are web-based RSS readers, app-based RSS
readers, freemium, paid for – lots of options
 Examples:
 NetVibes – www.netvibes.com
 ProtoPage – www.protopage.com

5. Setting up RSS feeds
 Many web pages provide a simple button to get to the
RSS feed, usually looking like this:
 You can create custom feeds, for example search
and/or citation alerts from a database like Socpus or
Web of Science
 There are aggregator services for journals content
lists, such as Zetoc and journaltocs –
http://zetoc.jisc.ac.uk and www.journaltocs.hw.ac.uk

6. Managing your information – web
pages
Social bookmarking tools
 Store your internet favourites in one place (no need to sync
across devices)
 Use keywords (aka tags) to organise and quickly find favourite
sites
 Share your links with others (or not – your choice)
 Follow (via RSS) the links posted by others
 Examples:
 Diigo – www.diigo.com
 Delicious - https://delicious.com
 Pinboard (social bookmarking for introverts) - https://pinboard.in/

7. Managing your information – articles
and other documents
Bibliographic software
 Provides a central place to store and organise bibliographic
information about, and full text of, articles and other
outputs
 Many different types – web-based, desktop-based,
browser-based
 Examples:
 EndNote – http://endnote.com – on university applications
 RefWorks – www.refworks.com/refworks
 Mendeley – www.mendeley.com
 Zotero – www.zotero.org

8. Reading and annotating
Some bib software and dedicated reader/note taking
software
 Can provide additional functionality for things like
highlighting, making notes, linking documents
 Could help in the production of rough initial drafts
 Examples:
 Mendeley – www.mendeley.com
 Qiqqa – www.qiqqa.com
 ReadCube – www.readcube.com
 Evernote – https://evernote.com

9. Techniques for managing your
own files
What can go wrong with managing your files?
• You could lose your work
• Your files could become corrupted
• You may be unable to find an important file or not know
which is the most up to date version
• You may be unable to back up your claims
• You may not be able to access your own data and files in
the future

10. Techniques for managing your
own files
•ALWAYS save your work on your M
drive – seek advice from CSD and
Records Management before
considering an alternative
•DON’T rely on portable media
•DON’T have all your work on one
device
•DO have a consistent way of
naming your files
•DO keep an explanation of your file
naming scheme
•DO keep earlier versions of files
•DO keep an explanation of the
structure of your data
•DO make use of the sources of
support around the University

11. What resources would you
recommend?

12. All the best