Julie Andring - NOODLEBIB

http://www.noodletools.com

Introduction to NoodleBib

NoodleBib is a software program that assists organizing research information.  The two main features of NoodleBib are generating a bibliography and associated notecards with each article.  The Paper source for writing the report is Google Docs. NoodleBib is stored in the clouds.

 

Bibliography

NoodleBib provides a bibliography template to be filled out by the user.  It labels the type of media source in four categories of Periodicals, Non-periodicals, Electronic/Online, Audiovisual. It has a line for the DOI.  Each reference article can be labeled as a Primary, Secondary or a Tertiary Source of information. There are prompts associated with each line of the template. NoodleBib is equipped to produce a reference list to APA 6th Edition standards. There is a spellchecker for this template.


Notecards 
 

The notecards are what attracted me to this software tool. Notecards that are associated with each item in the bibliography can be created, as well as notecards that are not associated with any reference material. A notecard has three main fields: Direct Quotation; Paraphrase; and My Ideas.  Direct Quotation allows the user to copy and paste from the information source into this field.  The paraphrase field is the space for the user to reword the quotation.  The My Ideas field is a space to make notes to yourself e.g., where does this fit in the outline?  How does this relate to other information?  What other information do I need in light of this information?

 

The uniqueness of this software tool is that each notecard can be coded by text, color, or visual image tags. Searches according to these tags can be done.  Notecards can then be grouped into piles of a given heading and put into a logical order of presentation in the paper.  Studying a pile of notecards informs the user to quickly review the amount of information gathered on that topic.  Each notecard template has the basic text functions and allows for importing images and custom characters.  As is the case for the bibliography, there are prompts associated with each line of the template and there is a spellchecker feature.

 

Pros and Cons of NoodleBib

Having explored this software tool these past weeks, the following is my opinion on the pros and cons of this program.

 

Pro Bibliography

There are thorough tutorials on getting started with NoodleBib.  Tutorials were in both pdf and audiovisual formats.

The prompts on entering the bibliography information are helpful for complex citations.  The bibliography will meet APA 6th edition standards.

The bibliography can be generated and then pasted into different Word programs. I like the three level indicators of importance for articles. 

Pro Notecards

The notecards have a field to write down the highlights of the article. The notecard feature of having a space to copy a direct quote and then a space to reword it seems to be a useful feature.  Using this feature in advance of the entire writing might allow the full writing task to move more quickly and smoothly.  

The notecards can automatically connect to the reference article, allowing easy access to go back and read that source again if need be when the writer is composing the paper.  

Sorting by tags replaces the color sticky-notes, high-lighter markers, and other ways of traditionally grouping articles under themes. Use of tags allows multiple marking of notecards, allowing it to be grouped into one  pile and later into another pile.

There's no limit to the number of notecards that can be created for a single reference.

There's no limit to the number of piles of notecards that can be created. 

The content of Notecards can be copied and pasted into other Word programs.   

I like that images can be imported onto a  notecard.

It's possible to have the Google Docs paper and the notecards open at the same time. 

This software program stores its information in the clouds which frees up storage space on my computer.

The price to purchase this for one year is an affordable $8.00.

Con Bibliography

As stated above, NoodleBib is not free although it is inexpensive ($8.00/year).

The biggest con on the bibliography is that  I have been using EndNoteWeb for which I don't need to manually enter this information for those articles which are on-line.  Entering it here felt like doing double work.

Manually entering information opens the door to typographical errors.

I most often did not have the DOI or URL for the articles to enter; as I ease up on my obsessiveness to enter something on each line I decided that it was desirable but not necessary information and I left it blank.

Con Notecards

My biggest disappointment in this program was to discover that I couldn't place a notecard in more than one pile at a time.  

Many of the articles that I have copied are in pdf format which do not allow for cut and paste into any word program.  This makes the Direct Quotation cumbersome as it would all have to be manually entered.

This information is all stored in the clouds.  I'm not entirely comfortable with this yet; it makes me nervous to not have a back-up copy of my information.

Notecards do not have a field to hold the abstract of an article, as EndNoteWeb does.

Notecards do not have lines for keywords and such that are automatically entered into EndNoteWeb.

 

 

My Solution

Given the pros and cons of my exploration of NoodleBib,  I think that what I will do is to write my paper on my Word program but utilize the notecards feature of NoodleBib. I found (for free) a program that converts pdf files to word files.  This allows me to copy/paste quotes into notecards (much less to highlight sections and interject my own comments/opinions) in the body of the article.  It ordinarily costs $39.00.   I could create multiple cards for reference articles in order to place that media source in more than one pile but I think this would get confusing. I will instead sort by tags and create a pile, then put all articles back into the big mix and resort by another tag.  I will maintain EndNoteWeb as the holding place of all my media and only enter into NoodleBib those media that I will use on a given paper.  EndNoteWeb will generate the reference list for my paper.

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