Feature of the Week: New BibTeX Entry types

When a publication is posted to BibSonomy one of the most important fields of that post is the publication's entry type. There are 14 regular BibTeX entry types - e. g. “article” or “book” being the most common ones.

BibSonomy has supported 13 of those types and in our last release we have added the missing 14th: “conference”.

Over time, there has been great demand for a new BibTeX entry type that allows posting presentations. We are happy to announce that “presentation” is one of six new non-regular (!) entry types, that we have implemented in BibSonomy. Here is a list of the new types:

• electronic: references electronic publications like articles on the web or blog posts
• patent: references patent documents
• periodical: references magazines or other regularly appearing publications
• preamble: references preambles
• presentation: references slides from your talks, seminars or lectures
• standard: references documents describing norms, guidelines, etc.

The new types can be selected during the publication posting.
Our system tag “sys:entrytype:” can help you search for publication posts of a desired type. E. g. searching for “sys:entrytype:standard” returns only publications of type “standard”.
One final remark before you start posting your new BibTeX type posts: Those six new types are non-regular types. That means, they are used in BibSonomy and other applications but they do not belong the the 14 canonical types that are usually understood by all BibTeX styles. Depending on what style you use for your literature references you might sometimes have to adjust either the entry type of the reference or the BibTeX style.

Feature of the Week: BibSonomy and Ubiquitous Barcode Posts

The issue of this week introduces a feature that is especially helpful for users of BibSonomy who often use mobile devices. Then, it is often the case that an interesting book (with a barcode) needs to be bookmarked. Using an appropriate barcode scanner application, this step can be conveniently (semi-)automated, for a more 'ubiquitous' BibSonomy experience!

Below, we will demonstrate this with an Android application, however, this can probably also be accomplished using similar devices.

1) First of all, you need a suitable barcode scanner. For that (and for my Android phone) I applied the well-known "Barcode Scanner" application. With this app, scanning a barcode is easy, as shown below.



2) After scanning, you need to initiate the product search in order to gain access to the publication data.



3) If the Bibsonomy settings have not yet been added to the system, you need to configure the 'custom search URL', in the settings menu. Otherwise, skip to Step 4.







4) Next, query the configured (BibSonomy) custom search provider.



5) Finally, you can tweak retrieved publication data in the usual BibSonomy edit dialog. The screenshot below shows the 'normal' dialog, however, we are currently working on a mobile version of the BibSonomy user interface in order to enhance the user experience for mobile devices.





In my opinion, this is a really cool feature! So, play around with it, and we are happy to get your comments, suggestions, and further ideas.

Feature of the week: Configurable displayed resources

Today we are going to introduce the small new feature that allows you to preselect the resources which are shown at our resource pages.

In general when you look at our homepage you see both resources, bookmark and publication.
There you have the option to fade out one of them by clicking on one of the symbols at the top right over the publications.











But every time you reload the site you have to redo your selection.
Now you have the option to preselect the resource of your interest at your settings page












When you deselect one of the resources and go back to our homepage only the selected resource is shown.












Of course you have also the possibility to fade the other resources back in by clicking at one of the previous mentioned buttons at the top right.