by Toolbox columnist Dr Dave Filipovic-Carter
Many communications and technologies can be described as 'new', but are already mainstream and common-place in our work. This area is also very fluid, making it impossible to give anything other than a subjective snapshot. In doing that, I will address a few ideas as to how we can use these technologies to enhance our research practice, and also wider career.
In terms of conducting research, I think the two the primary values of new technologies are:
Sourcing references and material: A strong community of fellow researchers can be extremely useful as a means of keeping abreast of developments in your field, and perhaps more importantly in related areas where you can't hope to keep abreast of the conventional literature. The key here is the right mix of people. The medium used is secondary - whether it is a social bookmarking site (such as Delicious or Diigo), a small Twitter crowd, or a shared blog - the purpose is to have a place where you are all able to post and see others' posts about what is going on out there. The aim, as for so much social media, is to post and let others determine what might be of interest. But there is a good presumption, since this will be from a trusted network of colleagues - the aim is to manage information overload by having a small trusted network. A further step is social citation-sharing (for example CiteULike or Mendeley)
