Calibre: e-book management

It seems sometimes that there are a myriad of e-book publishing formats, so what happenas when you buy device 'A' and try but fail to read an ebook in format 'B'? The answer? You download Calibre, which is a free open-source e-book library management application, that amongst a wealth of features, will convert from a huge number of formats to a huge number of formats and can automatically detect/create book structure, like chapters and tables of contents. It can also insert book metadata into a "Book Jacket" at the start of the book (I've taken this directly from the calibre website, - go there and read more). Calibre looks to be an indispensible tool for owners of e-reading devices, and it's free. What are you waiting for?

FREE referencing tools

To soothe the pain of that post about nasty increases in library fines let me play good cop by drawing your attention to my picks for the best open source (FREE) online reference management tools.

There are lots of bookmarking sites out there (Delicious, Technorati, Reddit) to help you keep track of online items of interest. Most of these dont really do much to help you format article bibliographic details into an accepted academic referencing style.

These two FREE online tools do just that...


Connotea - The oldest of the many online referencing sites started life as a tool for scientists and researchers to manage references. Connotea provides a free online space for you to store, share and most importantly manage all your sources into a range of academic referencing styles.


Zotero - A free Firefox add on (ie you need to be using Mozilla Firefox as your internet browser) developed by the Centre for New Media & History at George Mason University. Zotero allows you to import & export items in a range of formats (including images and presentations) add your own notes and arrange bibliographic citations into your chosen referencing style. The best way to get started with Zotero is to watch the demo videos on the site.

Enjoy!