Mendeley: Teaching Scholarly Communication and Collaboration through Social Networking

Teaching Mendeley achieves the impossible – it gets users excited to learn about organizing and citing their research articles. However, introducing Mendeley to students and faculty goes well beyond assisting them with organizing their references. Students are particularly apt to see the benefits that its social networking features offer, including promoting collaboration, identifying key resources, and facilitating group work. There are benefits for librarians too the information it provides on the use of articles can contribute to collection development or research into patterns of information as well as promoting librarian expertise. As a free citation manager, Mendeley consists of two parts, a web interface that handles input – locating, gathering and tagging of citations and PDF’s, and a desktop client that handles output through its integration with word processing tools. Mendeley users appreciate that it is compatible with almost all web browsers, and operating systems there’s even an “App” for it. Mendeley allows users to import citations and documents from a built in search engine, from most databases, including Google Scholar, or from other citation managers such as RefWorks and EndNote, to create in-text citations and bibliographies using virtually any style guide. What really makes Mendeley stand out is the social networking it facilitates. Users can choose to open their collection of resources to the world or just to particular groups. It is also a powerful discovery tool, leading users to key resources, potential collaborators, and connections in their fields. Tracing the other people who have included a particular article in their collections, and seeing what else they’ve tagged leverages the knowledge of experts and colleagues in new ways. The use of Mendeley can easily be included in workshops for faculty and information literacy sessions for students at all levels. Mendeley is free, user-friendly and effective; users are quick to see the benefits of time-saving, collaboration, and discovery Mendeley provides, extending the librarian’s role from bibliographic instruction into finding resources in new ways, and organizing found information.