Wednesday, January 26, 2011

Best practices on selecting entrytypes (bookmarks and publications) within BibSonomy

While several specialized social sharing systems exist, a feature that distinguishes BibSonomy from most of them is that it combines two kinds of entrypes, namely bookmarks and publications. This was and is intentionally designed to support knowledge workers in keeping all relevant information (mostly web pages and scientific papers) in a single place. However, we're also observing some users which use only one of the entrytypes, e.g. only publications to keep their papers organized, or only bookmarks just like a "traditional" social bookmarking service.

In both latter cases, one might think that the other (unused) entry type may be experienced by those users a bit like a "millstone around the neck" - as most BibSonomy pages contain two columns, one for each entrytype. However, this is actually not the case - because BibSonomy allows a persistent individual selection which entry types are to be displayed. Simply click on your settings page, and you'll see two checkboxes
  • show bookmarks
  • show publications
as you can see here:



When unchecking one of them, you won't be bothered by the corresponding entries any longer. So in fact, this setting allows for a specification of BibSonomy into a "bookmark-only" or "publication-only" system. However, maybe even then there may be certain situations when one is interested in both entrytypes. We also offer a solution for that: On the top right corner of each page, you find the resource type switches:



When clicking on them, you can override the resource type selection from your user settings for the current page. The same is accomplished by appending the parameter resourcetype=bookmark and/or resourcetype=publication to the URL. Please note that this choice is not saved - once you reload the page without the parameter, your user settings will apply again.

Finally, there exist some pages which just don't make sense for certain entrytypes - e.g. the authors page cannot contain bookmark entries, as web pages usually don't have explicit authors. Currently, these cases are not yet checked automatically, but we rely on our user's perception of consistency in order to avoid incompatible parameter combinations. In summary, we hope to provide a good level of adaptation to each user's needs by these features - let us know if we can do better!

Wednesday, January 19, 2011

Release 2.0.11

As announced, we released BibSonomy version 2.0.11 today. We also updated our publicly available libraries at our Maven repository. The new release contains various small bugfixes and internal restructurings which should make it run smoother and more efficiently; apart from that, we've included some new features:
  • Spring Security: BibSonomy now implements Springs access-control framework for the user authentication process. For you as BibSonomy user there are several smaller changes that come along with the new framework:
    • The remember-me cookie (the cookie that keeps you logged in) is now optional. You can choose to stay logged in with a checkbox on the login-page. Note that using the login on the BibSonomy start page you will not get the cookie.
    • The registration process for OpenId is now significantly easier.
    • The registration link in the upper right corner has been removed. To register simply click sign in to get to the login page to find a registration link.
    • The passwort-reminder has changed: After requesting a new password you will receive one that only allows you to change your password. Afterwards you'll have to use the regular sign in.
  • The BibSonomy URL now accepts a new parameter resourcetype. E. g. http://www.bibsonomy.org/json/?resourcetype=publication will retrieve publication posts. The other option is of cause resourcetype=bookmark.
  • When posting a publication that you are the author of, you can add the tag myown to it. As from now you can also use the checkbox "I am an author" in the editing dialogue edit publication - which adds the tag myown to the post. Note that this also causes those posts to appear on your CV page.
  • The publication details page shows a DOI link, if a DOI is available.
  • Two new scrapers are offered: The PNASScraper for Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America and the ScienceMagScraper for the Science Magazine.
  • The photo you can upload on the settings page is now only scaled to 200 pixels for the longest side, if the longest side is larger than 200 pixels.

The next release (2.0.12) is scheduled for February 23h. If you have any feedback or comments regarding our new release, we would be happy to hear from you!


Best,
Stephan

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