Are you excited about all the apps that are being designed to help you organize your life using tools like the iPhone? Well, the library community is also trying to encourage you to organize your academic life. Do you already use RefWorks to organize your citations? Well, here's a tool in RefWorks that you may not know about.
PSST! Don't use RefWorks but want to know more? Check out our training page and get started today! http://www.library.illinois.edu/refworks/
RefGrab-It allows you to pull bibliographic information from a webpage and add that to your RefWorks account. Why might you want to do this? Well, let's say you're doing research on the economy and want to bookmark an article you read in the Christian Science Monitor? (Which by the way, is now only available online.) Install the small utility program and use the RefGrab-It function just like you would if you were saving a favorite item in your bookmarks toolbar. Now you've saved all the metadata that is associated with that page.
What's metadata? Essentially it is information about information. Webpage developers add metadata to websites similar to how librarians add cataloging data about library books in the online catalog. It helps you find information.
You can even pull in citation information from PubMed, Google Scholar, Wikipedia, Amazon.
RefGrab-It developers have asked the Illinois community to participate in their beta test of the new version. If you're interested in participating, please contact Jeff Sramek (jeff.sramek@refworks-cos.com) as soon as possible and they will provide you with installation and use instructions.