The Web browser has become an essential tool for many academics, a versatile window into books, journal articles, blogs, and other research materials. Why not create a customized browser with professors’ needs in mind?
That is the logic behind Firefox Scholar, a software package under development by researchers at George Mason University that will help users organize and cite materials they have found online. The open-source software, which developers plan to release free sometime next year, will plug into the popular Firefox browser, which is also open source.
“A good way of thinking about it is incredibly smart bookmarking,” says Daniel J. Cohen, an assistant professor of history at George Mason who is working on the project. “You’re not just bookmarking the page, but you’re automatically [capturing] author, title, all that info that scholars want to save.”
Commercial software is already available to help scholars organize their citations, but Firefox Scholar would bring that function directly into the browser, says Mr. Cohen.
For the browser-based software to work fully, however, digital archives must format their books and articles in a way that lets it sort out where elements like title, author, and other bibliographic information reside. Some digital collections already do that, and others could make minor adjustments to comply, says Mr. Cohen.
Roy Rosenzweig, a professor of history and new media at the university, says the new browser would also allow researchers to automatically save a copy of an online article or Web page and make annotations on those saved pages. That’s better than a shoebox full of notecards and photocopied articles, says Mr. Rosenzweig.
The project recently received a $250,000 grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services.
The software is one of many tools being built at George Mason’s Center for History and New Media, where Mr. Rosenzweig is director and Mr. Cohen is director of research projects. The Virtual Library of Virginia, which is sponsored by the State Council of Higher Education for Virginia, is collaborating on the project.
A beta version of the software is expected by summer or later next year through the center’s Web site (http://chnm.gmu.edu).
Could such a browser foster plagiarism?
On the contrary, Mr. Cohen says, arguing that because the software will clearly track where all of the material it stores has come from, it will help scholars avoid accidental plagiarism.
“Inadvertent plagiarism is at a higher probability” when scholars record sources manually, he says.
Of course, the software could discourage researchers from ever leaving the comfort of their desks to get a book from the library.
http://chronicle.com Section: Information Technology Volume 52, Issue 17, Page A31
