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About this wiki

DiRT (Digital Research Tools) has a new home! Please visit Bamboo DiRT to explore this excellent collection of research tools.

 

Since the DiRT wiki has been superseded by Bamboo DiRT and is no longer being maintained, we have disabled all user accounts. We encourage you to contribute to Bamboo DiRT: http://dirt.projectbamboo.org/

 

As digital information proliferates, researchers need tools to find, organize, manipulate, analyze, and share it.  But how do you keep up with the hundreds of tools that can help you to be more efficient and innovative and find the ones best for you?  Digital Research Tools (DiRT) brings together snapshot reviews of software that can help researchers--professors, students, think-tankers, teachers, librarians, corporate intelligence gatherers, and other inquisitive folks--do their work better.  We do our best to keep our reviews clear and straightforward rather than full of jargon.   We also group tools into categories so that researchers can identify relevant ones more easily.  We cover a range of software, including tools to help you manage and share your bookmarks, create bibliographies, analyze and visualize texts, brainstorm, collaborate, collect data, etc.  Although we generally prefer tools that are free (open source is even better), we also cover software that comes with a price tag (if seems to be worth the money).

 

Reports on digital scholarship have called for a resource like DiRT.  For instance, participants in the 2005 Summit on Digital Tools for the Humanities found that "the most valuable aid for collaboration would be a clearinghouse to inform and educate digital scholars about useful tools" (17). DiRT aims to serve as a central "clearinghouse" for information about tools useful to scholarship.

 

Interested in getting a sneak preview of software we're thinking about adding to DiRT, or even suggesting tools for us to review?  Check out http://del.icio.us/tag/tools4research or, if you're a del.icio.us user, tag tools that you come across as "tools4research."

 

Want to learn more about where DiRT is going, what new features are on tap, and what challenges we're confronting?  Check out the DiRT blog, "The Dirt on DiRT."

 

Who Are We?

The Digital Research Tools team currently includes academic librarians with expertise in the humanities, science, and business.  We welcome new contributors--contact Lisa Spiro at lspiro@rice.edu if you're interested.

 

Editors

 

Many sections in DiRT have an editor who is responsible for adding links to and reviews of tools and ensuring the quality of content in that category.  If a section does not have an assigned editor, the DiRT editors assume joint responsibility for it until we can identify someone with the qualifications and interest to serve as an editor.  If you're interested in signing up to be an editor, please email lspiro@rice.edu and provide a brief description of your interest and qualifications.

 

More information:

 

Comments (2)

Marshall Preddy said

at 10:27 pm on Feb 4, 2009

Love the site, but I'm testing to see if I can add my own comment.

Kathy Kawasaki said

at 1:14 pm on Oct 24, 2009

Thank you for taking on this valuable task on behalf of the rest of us

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