The Emergence of Contemporary Technologies - Research Paper Example

Introduction The growing need for a better tomorrow has changed the magnitude of academic work. With the need to have proper academic works done, a good referencing was required. The emergence of contemporary technologies like End Note proved to be a very beneficial aspect of technological advancement helped solve such a puzzle while also improvement to the academic activities of knowledge seekers (Williams, 2010). These technologies have often helped in improving the quality of research work thus uplifting the growth of various sectors of the economy at different levels and quarters. This has lead to numerous innovations. This facilitated the need to have some application that could help in managing citations from different sources during academic writing. These sources of academic citations include books, scholarly articles, personal notes and journals. The emergence of End Note, a referencing application to help academic writers manage writing citations was developed. The End Note reference application provides library store for citations. It also enables one to create their own citations library and store so that they can use it the future (Williams, 2010). It provides an import link through which you can upload your citations. It also offers an interface for manually inputting your citations it thus offers special user friendly interfaces that make referencing and citations very easy. However, EndNoteX4 software package can also be used commercial referencing. In commercial essay writing, it can be used to manage references and bibliographies. With a number of referencing tools, one is able to select the kind of referencing they want to make, whether it’s book, film or articles. The drop down menu also has a number of input fields that enable user to get multiple citations without the tiresome manual input of references. EndNote offers compatibility with several bibliography databases that makes it simple and easy for academics writers to import references into the EndNote library. This software package also makes it easy to for databases within the software package. Catalogs are also offered and can be searched from the software. Reference styling is also done automatically to which style you choose. They include MLA, APA, Harvard styles and many more. This citation management package therefore is of unparalleled importance to authors, students, researchers, librarians and writers in general. In writing the evaluation report we will look at some vital aspect of EndNote X4 including how it compares to any two other citations management software packages like Catavi, Docear, Papers, Zotero, Mendeley and Qiqqa (Hotch, 2010). We will also look at various benefits that come with this software which may not be found amongst other reference management software packages. Over the years several versions of EndNote software package has been produced. These versions supported different kinds of software operating systems. They support windows operating system, and other operating software like Macintosh and Linux operating systems. In windows operating system, different versions were developed to support different office software. Earlier versions of windows are also not very compatible with the referencing software. However the later windows office versions like windows 7, 2010 and 2013 are compatible with most versions of the citation management software. EndNote is however compatible with most of the windows office versions. The compatibility enables one to create referencing lists in different versions and still be able to import them to the reference library that you had created in order to quicken citation. This thus makes it the most used bibliographic referencing tool. Literature review Due to the importance of technological innovations, a number of researchers and innovators have got down their tools to give the world the exciting look in terms of technology. The good work of giving the world has been conducted by various institutions that have conducted the research in different areas of invention (Williams, 2010). The development of library management systems was due to the growing need for proper referencing of research work. Several researchers and developers finally came up with different referencing tools. The referencing tools included EndNote and several other library management systems, some of which are open source. This was done by individual developers and software institutions. In the year 1988, a library management application makes it to the public domain. This was the individual work of Thomson Reuters. The first referencing tool is made thus making the research work easy. This tool is EndNote with several versions to later follow suit. With the aim to have research work be more organized, this wonderful software was created to help in organizing references of research and also making it easy to access other information required about academic materials (Compson & Conner, 2006). However it tool a little while before more referencing tools were added to the public gallery. On 13th of February the year 2006 Citavi was published by Swiss Academic Software, a Switzerland based software institution (Thompson, 2006). This software was meant to provide library management services that could make it easy to organize research work. The software majorly got a boost in German market where it became a major referencing tool. Several institutions in Germany use it even currently. Nonetheless, barely eight months later, Center for History and New Media at GMU added another referencing tool into the public gallery. The Zotero library management tool was released to the public for use. This was open source software that was meant to be used by the public at no charge. It was released to the public for free use. This increased the quality of referencing since it the most affordable amongst those in the public domain. Methodology Several techniques are put into action while to trying to elicit inform that could lead to development of library management software. There are always common ways of gathering information about certain subject matters especially in gathering information about development of software done by an individual. However, in the context of library management software like EndNote, Zetero and Citavi secondary data may be the most reliable source of information since little research is done about such patented software.There are a number of special requirement elicitation methods that may cut across all disciplines. In eliciting information about the fundamentals of contemporary technologies and specifically citation management software such as EndNote, reliance on the internet and secondary sources of data are analyzed to help get exactly what is needed. Below are the methodology techniques that can be used to elicit information on EndNote, Citavi and Zetero Internet . In the modern day, the internet plays a very crucial role in various research activities. This include quest to find information that can be of substance to the subject of research. Several scholarly articles, books, journals and reviews are always available on the internet. Some are freely available while others are sold. The information post on the internet can be accessed by anybody from any part of the world. This therefore makes internet a major source of information. While evaluating EndNoteX4, several data and information was gathered from the internet. This information was vital in conducting both comparative and contextual analyses. This majorly focused in getting enough information that could enable me get the key annotations of this library management software while also trying to evaluate the degree of importance of other referencing software. Several websites were visited to help gather the vital information that was required in conducting the evaluation. These websites include www.citavi.com, www.zetero.com, www.docear.org, and www.diqqa.com. This was done with a view to gather more information about the various library management software packages. As seeable from the domain names of these websites, they are the official websites for the software packages. They offer various details concerning the software associated by them. The information provided by each of the websites concerning their product is what formed the major component of this analysis. This information was used in comparing EndNoteX4 and these library software since it contained detailed information about them. Books, Manuals, articles and Journals In software terms, gathering information about a package may be done through different and divergent ways. Several books concerning the library management system were perused with an intention of extracting information about their development and usability (Compson & Conner, 2006). The books provided detailed information concerning the software. The details included the developer of each of the software and various aspects of usability like guidelines of how to use the software. User manuals also formed a very important part of the information gathering for this report. User manuals contain a lot of information about a product. Such information is aimed at enlightening the user of the software product about the usage. The information contained in the user manuals show how the product is installed into the system and clear procedures of how to use it. It also provides some information on how it can be maintained. It also provides contact details of the software support team who can be contacted anytime when there is need for support services. It also gives direction on the kind of supported software operating systems that each application supports. This eliminates challenges that may occur due to issues of compatibility (Leon, 2005). This information was vital in doing the comparative analysis that was used to evaluate the application software for library management. Several articles have also been written about the library management system. The information in the articles is the opinion of users of the software, experts and even librarians. We used the information here gage the expert analysis of the software package especially EndNoteX4, Zetero and Cativa and try have the expertise view and ideologies surrounding them. The use of journals as a way of storing information makes it another convenient source of information about the management software products. Various journals were read that some of the information contained in this analysis relied upon. Interviews Interviews are one of the most reliable methods of getting first hand information concerning a specific area of study. With regard to the above subject, fundamentals of contemporary technologies, with specific area of study being evaluation of EndNoteX4/X7 and how it compares to other referencing tools, different stakeholders are interviewed with an aim of getting information relating to the subject matter. In this case, several stakeholders are interviewed to give their thoughts on their subject matter (Kalstrom, 2012). The stakeholders in this case include; users of the software, software vendors, information technology experts, software developers and scholars. This will lead to gathering of useful information that is expressed with a lot of expertise. This information would be considered highly valuable since it’s the mind of those are knowledgeable in the subject. Such information will form the major part of the analysis of the contemporary system. Information gathered from users will be helpful in evaluating the importance of the software to the users whereas the information gotten from the software developers would be helpful in knowing the major foundations and the user requirements that resulted to the said end product. Scholars would give their scholarly view of the subject that will make it easy to understand the whole scenario surrounding the software subject. If all these people are interviewed, it would virtually form the greatest part of the total information gathered. Information and Technology forums and seminars There are several forums for discussing modern technological inventions and trends. Some may be specific on library management systems like EndNote and other referencing packages.These kinds of forums are always organized with a view of some aspects of information technology and the current technology trends in the field of IT. These forums would present one with the current technologies and how they impact the consumer world. The information would also be useful in evaluating the fundamentals of the contemporary technology in question. Analysis EndNoteX4 This is one of the best library management software packages. It has several merits that it offers its users over other library applications. Advantages- this management software has modifiable formats that can enable user work conveniently on different formats. The system can access bibliography databases that are remote with a lot of ease provided they are online. It also offers numerous pre-determined references that make it simple for one to make citations by just selecting (Daniel, 2011). The EndNoteX4 supports several browsers thus making it one of the best referencing tools available. Demerits- despite all the good virtues EndNoteX4 has, it also offers some shortcomings. This software is available in the market at a cost. This requires anyone to purchase it before it’s used thus locking out those may want to use it but lack money. The search of reference by author is a little complicate and unclear with restricted retrieval of information. Zotero This is referencing tool that is both free and open source. It integrates several processors like word and search engines thus making another good library management tool that more convenient for little research work. Advantages- this library management application offers an auto-retrieval of some kind of metadata that makes referencing to a bit précised. It also supports tagging of references thus making it easy to trace the information used some time back. The software is free thus making it highly affordable. Disadvantages-one of the key setbacks that Zetero offers is that has limited browser support. It only supports certain browsers thus disadvantages those who do not use the unsupported browsers. Being open source software also compromises on quality since expert programmers can easily make changes to the software. Citavi This referencing tool is one of the library management systems majorly used in learning German learning institution. It also offers platforms for organizing academic works. Advantages- this library management application has a schedule planning mode that enable one schedule tasks(Williams, 2010). It has content pickers that help in saving references. It also has storage widgets that enable storage of references for later use. Disadvantages-it has a uni-functional request handler that only takes one request at a time. This leads to long wait for the request to be handled if several are made at ago. It also offers limited adding of online resources thus narrowing the scope search. EndNote Zotero Citavi Nature Commercial Open source Commercial License Propriety license AGPL propriety Developer Thomson Reuters Center for History and New Media Swiss Academic Software Supported OS Mac OS X,Windows Linux,Unix,Mac,Windows Windows Citation styles APA,Chicago/Turabian/ Harvard, MLA,Endnote APA,Chicago/Turabian/ Harvard, MLA,Endnote APA,Chicago/Turabian/ Harvard, MLA,Endnote Public release 1988 Oct 2006 Feb 2006 Price $300 Free Free/$80 and above Latest versions X6 3.2 3.0.8.1 Protection User-password User-password User-password Conclusion The use of EndNote as a library management tool is very important in academic reference. With regard to the above comparative analysis, there exist minimal differences between EndNoteX4/X7, Cativa and Zotero. However, there several similarities between these library management applications that make them look alike. The similarities exist in their usability and functionality (Chen, 2008). According to my this research, EndNoteX4 seems way above these other applications as it has a more user friendly interface that offers undue advantage over others. Therefore it is the most appropriate amongst them hence should be continually used. Bibliography Chen, H. 2008. EndNote v9: bibliographies made easy. (Version 9 for Macintosh and Windows ed.). Berkeley, CA: Thomson ReasearchSoft. Compton, S. B. & Conner, G. R. 2006. Configuration management for software. New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold. Crnkovic, I. & Asklund, U. 2012.Implementing and integrating product data management and software configuration management. Boston: Artech House. Daniels, J. 2011. EndNote: the all-in-one solution; search bibliographic databases on the Internet, organize your references in a snap, create bibliographies in one simple step(Windows version 4.0, 1st ed.). Berkeley, CA: ISI ResearchSoft.. Horch, J. W. 2010. Practical guide to software quality management (2nd ed.). Boston, MA: Artech House. Jonnes, S. 2009. EndNote Plus 2.0: enhanced reference database & bibliography maker.. Berkeley, CA: Niles & Associates. Kalstrom, J. 2012. EndNote: the all-in-one solution; search bibliographic databases on the Internet, organize your references in a snap, create bibliographies in one simple step(Windows version 4.0, 1st ed.). Berkeley, CA: ISI ResearchSoft.. Leon, A. 2000. A guide to software configuration management. Boston: Artech House. Leon, A. 2005. Software configuration management handbook (2nd ed.). Boston: Artech House. Thompson, W. 2005. EndNote: the all-in-one solution. (Windows version 4.0, 1st ed.). Berkeley, Calif.: ISI ResearchSoft. Thompson, w. 2006. EndNote 10: bibliographies made easy : getting started guide. (Version 10 for Mac OSX and Windows ed.). Berkeley, Calif.: Thomson ReasearchSoft. Williams, J. 2010. EndNote: --bibliographies & more made easy : search bibliographic databases on the Internet, organize references and images in a snap, construct your paper with built-in templates, watch bibliographies appear as you write! (Macintosh version 7.0. ed.). Berkeley, Calif.: ISI ResearchSoft. Read More