The temptation with a blog is to write posts that other people have already blogged about. In writing about my discoveries during my time at Murdoch, it’s tempting to do a bit of retrospective and to talk about all of the things I’ve found over the past year and a half. But many others have already blogged about those, and in much more detail than I ever could. Writing about those discoveries would also make me feel as if I’m always “behind” in my blog writing, because there’s just so many things to talk about.

So instead, this post will start my “discoveries” off with a list of my top 10 tools, or my top 10 “discoveries”, in terms of my online research toolkit so far. The things I use every day. And after this, I’ll just be blogging new discoveries (well, new to me, anyway!).

Penny’s Top 10 (Online) Tools for Research

1. Zotero, free citation management software that works from your Firefox browser. I love how it’s so easy to add journal articles and books from online sources such as Amazon!
2. Delicious, a “social bookmarking” site. You can see my bookmarks at http://delicious.com/pcoutas and a video explaining it all here
3. Google Scholar, the essential literature search tool for the Naughties. In fact, I rate all of Google’s services quite highly in my toolkit, especially Google Docs
4. LiveJournal Communities, a blogging site but with a bit of a difference. This isn’t your usual “listen to me” blog site, but rather works around communities of readers and writers. There are some great communities for academics and researchers that have really kept me grounded and made me aware of overseas contexts for postgraduate studies. I also use LJ (as it’s fondly called) as my RSS reader.
5. The Piled Higher and Deeper Comic, essential for procrastination (and reducing that feeling of isolation)
6. The LibX Toolbar, lets me access Murdoch’s library right from my toolbar!
7. Email, I like to keep my private and professional email separate, but somehow they end up blurring a bit!
8. Flickr is a great photo sharing site. It’s also a good place to find photos under Creative Commons licenses that can be used in presentations (and blog posts!).
9. My research website is hosted by Dreamhost, and so forms an essential part of my toolkit. I store all of my data in an archive powered by Omeka, built by the crew behind Zotero.
10. Online (synchronous) chat tools such as Skype, SecondLife and MSN Messenger are also a part of my toolkit, but I don’t use any to the exclusion of others: it depends on who I want to talk to, if we want to use video (or avatars!), or what everyone else is using (e.g. a virtual conference). I think SecondLife has a lot of potential for academic presentations and conferences: the feeling of co-presence is far greater than just watching a streamed PowerPoint and audio presentation

I also use my iPhone extensively for research, but that’s a whole other post :)

Is there anything you’d recommend I check out? Leave a comment!