Chronicle of Higher Education/The Wired Campus blog
September 29, 2008

Thomson Reuters Inc. sued George Mason University in a Virginia court this month, arguing that a free software tool made by the university makes improper use of the company’s EndNote citation software.

The company’s complaint argues that programmers at George Mason’s Center for History and New Media reverse-engineered EndNote to create a free program called Zotero. The university’s free software is a plug-in for the Firefox Web browser, and it is designed to help scholars store and organize their online research. It has been downloaded more than 1 million times.

Thomson Reuters argues that the latest release of George Mason’s software, which can import files created by EndNote and turn them into files that can be used and shared online using Zotero, “is willfully and intentionally destroying Thomson’s customer base for the EndNote software.” The company seeks $10-million in damages for each year the university has offered the software and to stop the university from distributing versions of Zotero that can convert EndNote files.

The Web site for Zotero boasts that the software “includes the best parts of older reference manager software (like EndNote) — the ability to store author, title, and publication fields and to export that information as formatted references — and the best parts of modern software and Web applications (like iTunes and del.icio.us).”

Dan Cohen, director of the Center for History and New Media at George Mason University, declined to comment on the lawsuit, citing advice from his lawyer. Officials from Thomson Reuters also declined to comment. —Jeffrey R. Young

Posted on Monday September 29, 2008 | Permalink |

Voter Registration forms are available at the Research Information Desk on the first floor of the Addlestone library.  Students, faculty and staff can fill out the form and leave it at the Research Information Desk where it will be picked up and mailed.

Remember that October 4th is the last day for voter registration.  Please allow enough time for your forms to to be mailed and arrive on time.

You can also use the information at http://www.scvotes.org/how_to_register_absentee_voting to get the addresses of your voter registration board if you want to mail your registrations yourself.

More voter information is also available on our updated Election Information subject guide.

Feel free to come by and register!  We hope to see you soon at the library.

CofC now has our own blogging server.  Take a moment to look around at: https://blogs.cofc.edu/

The web team is willing to set a redirect from your existing web account if you would prefer to use the blog server for your website. Some advantages to this are that the admin panel is web-based, which means you can access and update your site from any wired/wireless location.  The fact that WordPress allows for static pages provides greater flexibility with your content. Another benefit of WordPress is that it can be used as a kind of content management system.  It separates the layout & design of your page from the content without any need for programs like DreamWeaver, NVU or SeaMonkey, allowing you to create, edit, or update as much content as you want – when you want.

Blogging projects also encourage student collaboration and and participation in the creation, evaluation, discovery, and selection of information.  By participating in a classroom blog, students are able to experience the process of research by posting some of their findings and views on what they are reading and doing. They can also present mini-presentations and comment on classmates works. The blog format can aid in the organization and archival of their work. It can also be used for peer collaboration and feedback from one class member to another, as students learn what their peers are doing as they themselves are doing it. As a result of this interaction, new ideas and opportunities may arise and class projects may morph into new directions.

If you are interested in getting an account please contact the webmaster at  webmaster at cofc.edu and specifying “Blog Request” in the subject line of the e-mail.  By default your blog’s address will be blogs.cofc.edu.

I have a posted a printable handout to get you started.  Happy Blogging!