Many of you have already noticed the new Analysis/Stats link in the Options menu when you are viewing your bibliography in NoodleBib. Clicking the link brings up a new screen with a series of bar graphs that categorize your entries in different ways (by medium, citation type, and by date). You may be surprised by what these graphs imply about the composition of your list.

The page is currently divided into four sections:

1. Basic Statistics (“Have I gathered enough information and met the requirements?”)
2. Medium (“Is this the right balance of print and online sources for my research?”)
3. Citation Type (“Did I make full use of the resources available to me?”)
4. Currency (“Is currency important because I am reporting on a time-sensitive issue or evolving topic?”)

This is something that we’ll be expanding on over the next month or two. We invite your feedback on the feature.

Debbie will keynote this year’s NYCSLS Annual Fall Conference on Oct. 26th (Secondary) and Oct. 27th (Elementary) at Queens College.

Description: From Novice to Expert: Teaching Inquiry Research will identify some misconceptions about the research process that are common among naïve thinkers of all ages. Debbie will suggest ways to design learning experiences and develop student questioning skills so that novices confront their (mostly unexamined) ideas about research and develop a complex understanding of the process.

Debbie will also do a note-taking workshop on both days. For information, please see the link from the NYC Department of Education library services Web page. Hope to see you there!

NoodleTools was reviewed and described as “highly recommended” in the June 2006 issue of CHOICE. The article has been reproduced here with permission from the American Library Association.

[Visited Mar'06] The NoodleTools site provides a wealth of free teaching tools on citation format and information literacy, primarily aimed at grades K-12 but useful for lower-division undergraduates as well. A subscription provides access to NoodleBib 6, a Web-based tool that assists in the process of generating, editing, and publishing an MLA works-cited list or an APA reference list. NoodleBib acts more like a wizard for creating bibliographic citations than a full-fledged bibliographic management software program. Such programs (e.g., ProCite, Reference Manager, Endnote, Biblioscape, and RefWorks) provide filters for importing information from subscription databases and modules for creating in-text citations as well as output in a wider range of citation formats. However, users need grounding in the elements of citation creation to input information by hand or to clean up the bibliographic output when filters are faulty. NoodleBib walks the user through the process of inputting citation information with clear, simple instructions that differentiate between source types with ease.

NoodleBib’s range of source type options is remarkable, and much clearer than any bibliographic management program this reviewer has used. The completed reference list can be output in .RTF format to any word processor, e-mailed, or sent to a teacher with a school or class subscription. NoodleBib does not have import or text citation functions, but it does offer guidance in creating parenthetical citations for specific entries. Although it lacks the power of true bibliographic management software, NoodleBib 6 outputs extremely accurate citations much more easily than such software programs. It could be an excellent teaching tool in lower-division undergraduate programs. Alternatively, the free tool NoodleBib Express (accessible from NoodleTools’s home page) might fulfill that teaching function just as well. Although it can output only a single source citation at a time, it has the same input and help functions as the full-featured NoodleBib. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Lower-division undergraduates and two-year technical program students. — M. F. Jones, East Tennessee State University

© American Library Association. Reproduced with permission, August 2006. Contact permissions@ala-choice.org for permission to reproduce or redistribute.

Debbie will be presenting at the Georgia Conference on Information Literacy this Saturday, October 7th @ 9:00 AM.

Beyond Cut-and-Paste: No More Cat and Mouse, Revisited

Description: K-12 librarians teach note-taking as a discrete set of skills like learning to paraphrase or quote, and to document sources correctly. However, aligned with online and print reading comprehension strategies and inquiry learning, the teaching of note-taking and note-making offers rich opportunities for students to think critically and reflect across the entire information literacy process.

Conference Web site

Starting next week, NoodleTools will be kicking off a three-month usability study and Web site redesign project. We’ll be working hand-in-hand with one of the most talented Web design firms out there. The study will include both NoodleBib and the Web site design as a whole. The month of October will be devoted to the research stage of this project. We’ll be spending time clarifying our own vision for the site. But even more importantly, our design team would like to talk to some of YOU to get your feedback on our ideas and understand exactly what your needs are.

Are you interested in participating in this study?

If you are a teacher or librarian who has used NoodleBib with groups of students and has explored the rest of the NoodleTools Web site in some depth, we’d like to hear your ideas (the good, the bad, and especially the ugly!). If you’d be willing to participate in an interview with our design team in the month of October, please contact us and let us know. Please include the following information in your message: (1) your name, (2) your school/organization, (3) your position at that location, (4) your e-mail and phone number, and (5) your availability (if you will be unavailable in October at any point). Also, if you think some of your students might be interested in participating in a verbal or written interview, please let us know — we’re very interested in their ideas as well.

The new notecards component in NoodleBib is now available to all subscribers!

We hope that you have some time to play with the new feature this summer — please feel free to e-mail us with questions or to report problems so that we can work out any issues before the start of the school year. Note that the notecard feature relies on technologies that are only supported by these browsers:

• Microsoft Internet Explorer: Versions 6.x and higher (not supported on Mac)
• Mozilla Firefox: Version 1.5 and higher (PC and Mac)
• Netscape Browser: Version 8.1 and higher

We’ve updated the NoodleBib user’s guide. We strongly encourage teachers and librarians to read the new chapter on notecards to gain an understanding of how the new feature compliments the existing citation software. Keep in mind that if you don’t want to use the feature at your school or library, you can turn it off through the subscription management area NoodleBib Customization option.

The user’s guide also covers several other features that were added since August last year. For example, if you aren’t aware of the optional citation labels (”tags”) feature introduced back in December, now you can learn all about it. Citation labels are disabled by default, so you need to enable them in the subscription management area if you want to use them at your location.

The static NoodleBib tour is being replaced with a series of Flash tutorials. One is up now and the others will be added in the next few weeks.

The online knowledge base has not yet been updated for this release — I’ll post a note here when that task is complete. Update: The knowledge base has now been updated (8/4/06).

Write us and let us know what you think!

This summer’s NoodleBib update (scheduled for Saturday, July 30th) includes a new feature that many of you have been anticipating — notecards! If you are someone who tried Google Notebook when it was released recently and thought “wow, something like this would be useful for taking notes for a research paper” then this is just the thing for you!

In a nutshell:

1. Link notecards to sources in your bibliography (or create “thought” cards that aren’t associated with a particular entry).
2. View notecards alongside bibliography entries (in the My Bibliography view), or organize notecards into main ideas (”clusters”) in a separate My Notes view.
3. Copy and paste anything (images, tables, formatting, etc.) from the Web into your notecards. Separate “Quote,” “Paraphrase,” and “My Ideas” fields to promote good notetaking skills and help prevent plagiarism.
4. Save notecards as an RTF file to open and manipulate in your word processor.
5. Apply any number of tags to each notecard (and then later search notecards by tag(s)).
6. Dynamic user interface similar to Google Notebook (organize notecards into clusters with drag/drop, show/hide details, quick-access links to clusters).
7. Uses AJAX to save your work in the background (no screen refreshes) as you go.
8. Notecards feature can be turned off by the account administrator via the subscription management interface, if it won’t be used.

Here are some preview screenshots of the notecards feature (click the thumbnail to open a larger image):

Note: Since this feature uses cutting-edge DHTML and AJAX technologies, only the following browsers will initially be supported (upgrade to these at your school if you plan to use this feature!):

• Internet Explorer 6+ or 7+
• Firefox 1.5+ (Mac or PC)
• Netscape 8.1+

Debbie presented to a packed room at NECC on Friday (”Beyond Acceptable Use: Developing and Implementing a Plagiarism Policy”). Click here for an overview and links to more information.

Update: A good summary has been written by Suzanne Porath on her blog.

Want to save your class some time? A new option in the subscription management area allows account administrators to import a batch of student folders into NoodleBib. Log in and click the “User Management” link to access the new feature. To generate a batch of student folders, follow the simple directions to specify folder information (personal ID; password; phone number) for each folder you wish to generate. A default password and 4-digit phone number that you select will be used if you omit the password or phone number in any of your entries.

As an example, you might select “testme” as the default password and “9999″ as the default phone number, and then enter the following into the import field:

NoodleTest1
NoodleTest2;newpass
NoodleTest3;newpass;1111
NoodleTest4;;2222

This would result in 4 new student folders associated with your subscription:

Personal ID: NoodleTest1 - Password: testme - Phone: 9999
Personal ID: NoodleTest2 - Password: newpass - Phone: 9999
Personal ID: NoodleTest3 - Password: newpass - Phone: 1111
Personal ID: NoodleTest4 - Password: testme - Phone: 2222

If something is wrong (e.g., a personal ID already exists, a password is too short, etc.), the screen will let you know what needs to be changed. After you make the necessary modification(s), just click the “Import Folders” button again. You can create up to 100 folders per batch, and each batch is tagged with the date and a description that you provide, allowing you to view the folders in a particular batch at a later date.

We had received several requests that we provide a way for students to share a list with a group of teachers. Previously, a “class name” was tied to a single teacher. A teacher could add a class name, a student could share their list with that class name, and the list would then be shared with that one teacher.

We’ve added an Additional Recipients field to the Add/Remove Class Names screen. The teacher may enter up to 3 additional personal IDs (which must be teacher/librarian folders). When a student shares a list, the list is shared with those other teachers as well. Note that from the student’s point of view, they are sharing the list once, using one class name. However, depending on how the class name is set up now, copies of the list can appear in the Lists Shared With Me section of four different users’ personal folders at that point (and all four can review the list and send individual comments within NoodleBib).

As usual, please let us know if you have any questions!