Biblio-Refs Information
Management Research Assistant
The facts are
staggering, even by conservative measures. In a CBS-TV report on university
libraries about 4 years ago, some data presented boggles the mind: There are at
least 25,000 professional journals in existence in the western world. Typically,
these periodicals publish four issues a year, with seven articles per issue on
average. The result is far more than 500,000 articles published annually.
And again, those are conservative numbers. Now, add to those numbers the many thousands
of chapters and several hundred more major textbooks published each
year and soon a most challenging dilemma arises: How can the threat of
information overload be effectively managed? One proven answer is Biblio-Refs. There is an adage about information
technology that bears repeating: "It's not what you know; it's where to
find it." In short, knowledge is the most precious asset academics possess.
The key is how to effectively manage that asset. These days the task of
marshalling research knowledge and reigning in the onslaught of information is
becoming taxing to overbearing to overwhelming.
There is simply too much knowledge moving too quickly. The information onslaught
-- 'info-flood' -- that faces graduate students, researchers, and professors is
fast becoming daunting and defying. The threat, of course, is ever-growing
discontent and even disinterest as the disconnect between reader and research
continues to worsen. Thus, the key is to know where to look for what you don't
know but need to find out. Biblio-Refs helps solve the
problem. It is a powerful knowledge organization tool. There is knowledge
worth knowing. There is information worth preserving. There is a body of
enduring research worth preserving, and recalling. Biblio-Refs offers a
'zero-latency' strategy for information exchange: Any information management
project proceeds faster and with better results with the right resources plan,
and tools. BR offers the serious education just such a mix and thus a
near-zero latency strategy; it gets top-level research findings into the
information pipeline quickly, accurately, and efficiently. Of course, achieving
zero-latency in information dissemination is daunting, but at least academics
now have a framework within which to collect, organize, filter, categorize,
search, and share collaborated or individually acquired knowledge. Knowledge
worth knowing. Face it: Time itself for
most of us is no longer discretionary. There is too much that must be done now.
"There just isn't time," despite beepers, car phones, personal mobile
phones, email, fax, voice mail, PDA quasi-computers, and notebook size computers
themselves. No matter how fast we run, we just can't catch up. For those of us
in academics, there is no time for the present when it comes to the research
literature. A hypothesis is framed, the research conducted, the results
tabulated, and a manuscript prepared . If well-connected or part of a research
team, the paper might just get published -- more than two years
later! By then, underway are untold dozens if not hundreds of other papers vying
for future publication. The research stream is ceaseless, unending, inevitable.
How can you get a grip on it all? How can we win the battle to reclaim a measure
of discretionary work-life balance amid the tumult? For academics, Biblio-Refs
will help harness your fleeting time! It's your tool for getting current
research answers now, without delay, strife, or excuse. Biblio-Refs gets the job done.
Try it....It is absolutely indispensable software for serious graduate students,
motivated classroom teachers, publishing professors, and research scientists.
This management information tool features more than 8,100 tightly
screened and rigorously edited research references. Selected from some
25 top research journals, books, and chapters, this encyclopedia of leading
references provides a definitive starting point for maintaining a personalized,
customized knowledge-base that you the user can add to in order to meet
professional needs and individual tastes. (Free knowledge-base updates of course
allow you to download additional refs as they become available: As of early 1998
the 'ref-count' has reached some 8,600.) Biblio-Refs involved 4
years of development and testing. The references have evolved/accrued over some 20
years. Unlike huge publicly-oriented databases, Biblio-Refs allows the user to
start with the best refs from the best journals and build from there. Indeed,
several major professional research journals offer their own databases of
references. The problem is that they are closed and restrictive, including works
from their own publication(s) only! Worse, there is no way for the user to
customize the database to meet individual research needs. As serious graduate
students, professors, and researchers also are discovering, library terminals
are too often down, generally involve frustrating restrictions (special logon or
validated ID codes), typically are beset by queues of impatient users, and
almost always return "hits" that far exceed search requests.
Biblio-Refs solves those problems and you can try it for free! No waiting. No
lines. No hassles. No negatives.... *Search more than 9,000 top research literature references with your
own computer in a fraction of the time required by conventional library search
efforts. *Never do you need to subscribe to this database -- never! It is all right
there and all updates are easily downloaded at any time for a mere $10. *Never are you required to order a Biblio-Refs CD-Rom update. We are not into
exploiting anyone who cares enough about learning that they want to improve
their knowledge base. *You won't get spammed! No more handing over your personal vitals when
filling in order forms. No more worrying about "cookies" logging
internet sites you visit and then spamming you with irrelevant email. No risk of
the order dept selling your information to mailing lists. Why? Because you
download the software yourself. Then you have the references on your own
computer. We have zero interest in cookies and no nothing of the technology. *Biblio-Refs does not waste your disk space or your time. We don't load in
junk refs. We don't fatten the database with foolishness -- speeches, poster
sessions, unpublished manuscripts, final reports, newspaper clips. If you want
them, you can scan them into your personalized database at your leisure. *Biblio-Refs does not force you to accept everything "they" want
you to have and very little of what is relevant or widely quoted in the
literature. More and more research journals are offering their own CDs of
databases. But you again get flooded with irrelevancy; who needs it! *Notice the cost: Bargain-basement prices. Absolutely no comparison in
quality or price with the commercial stuff major publishing houses
"offer." Give it some thought... Sidman (1960, p. 9) has observed that
'Behavior is rich subject matter'. True. But increasingly, many research studies
published are rather less rich in quality than the matter they study! Biblio-Refs helps YOU
cope with this trend. Containing only the "good stuff" (as one
graduate student put it), included in Biblio-Refs are only (a)
publications of clearly historical significance; (b) publications frequently
cited/ quoted in leading research journals; (c) research often cited/quoted that
addresses pressing human behavior problems; (d) studies repeatedly recommended
to me, Dr. Hedbring, by publishing colleagues; (e) references eagerly endorsed
by graduate students; (f) references brought to my attention in workshops,
lectures, and conversations which I subsequently find to be in line with the
other criteria. Accordingly, there are no ERIC entries, no interviews, no
invited speeches, no personal communications, no conference papers, few project
reports, no government reprints, no submitted-for- publication manuscripts, no
surveys, no newspaper articles, very few magazine pieces, few newsletter
columns, few department monographs, fewer 'remarks and comments'.... well, you
get the idea: Only the "good stuff" makes it into the core
'starter-set' content of Biblio-Refs. The rest is up to you. (Clicking on the "References" button on the 'Download' page on this
site will provide an accurate representation of the quality of research
contained in Biblio-Refs.)
Sincerely, we truly hope you will build
on the foundation we have spent far more than a decade creating. Delete
references you don't like. Change the categories and/or codes if needed. Use
your hand scanner to load your own notes into the annotation area ....Make Biblio-Refs
grow. Make it serve your research, your projects and dissertation work,
your presentations, consulting, and workshop needs. Biblio-Refs lets
you get the job done, and quickly at that: A low-end Pentium 100 notebook with
16 megs of RAM will complete a 3-operator Boolean search in 30 seconds! We also think grad students and
professors alike will love picking and choosing from among all that great
literature by such stellar mentors as Ayllon, Azrin, Baer, Bijou, Bricker,
Bruner, Carr, Chomsky, Cronbach, Dunlap, Dunn, Ellis, Gage, Gibson, Glaser,
Guess, Hilgard, Horner, Iwata, Kagan, Kantor, Keller, Kazdin, Kerlinger, Kirp,
Klatzky, Koegel, Kuhn, Jensen, Lawrence, Lindsley,Lovaas, Iwata, Malott, McLean,
Michael, Milgrim, Mussen, O'Leary, Ornitz, Piaget,Premack, Prizant, Repp,
Resnick, Reynolds, Rincover, Risley, Roos, Rosenshine, Ross, Rusch, Rutter,
Sailor, Schiefelbusch, Schopler, Schreibman, Sidman, Singh, Skinner, Snow,
Spradlin, Staddon, Stanley, Stoddard, Strain, Szasz, Taba, Taber, Terrace,
Thorndike, Trabasso, Turnbull, Tyler, Underwood, Wahler, Walberg, Watson, Wehman,
Wexler, Whalen, White, Wolf, Zeaman, Zigler -- believe it or not, just to name
an indicative few! Research literature is rich in so
many ways. But organizing the onslaught can prove equally overwhelming --
digging out sets of citations from among tattered cabinet files, tipsy desktop
stacks, and worn-torn looseleaf notebooks. It overwhelms. A knowledge base with
the power and scope of Biblio-Refs does, however, get the job done. Biblio-Refs truly harnesses the
overload. Think of it: A student, a colleague, a grantwriter, an inquisitive
member of an audience -- whomever! -- asks for a specific author, year, subject,
research topic, discussion idea ... and you are prepared! You can search your
customized Biblio-Refs information database. The information is 15 seconds away,
thanks to your notebook computer. Biblio-Refs is that useful -- as you
will soon discover. In sum, Biblio-Refs is a
genuine winner if you are serious about scholarly writing. And the reference
list only gets better as you yourself tailor it personally to meet your
own growing professional needs -- again, if you are at all serious about using
your carry-along notebook computer productively in your happy academic pursuits!
Enjoy!
In a culture of info-chaff, Biblio-Refs
is the wheat. Biblio-Refs does not add to the info-glut, it offers a
way to manage it! In short, Biblio-Refs is a way through the onslaught
of data-distraction; it is a searchable knowledge database -- your personal
knowledge base -- of the most often quoted research references, each coded to
reflect the content it addresses. Simple and straightforward as that. It is a
*"brown study" in what we should know.
The DOS version
of Biblio-Refs offers the following features: (a) all refs are on one
disk; (b) are refs are in ASCII (unformatted) form; (c) all refs can easily be
added to as you update the list with results of your own ongoing literature
review efforts; and (d) all refs are in APA-style, though are not formatted with
underlines or italics. The DOS version of Biblio-Refs also includes a
powerful search and display feature. Hence, you can search the ASCII list on up
to three search descriptors, using the Boolean 'and, or, not' operators.
The Windows95-compatible
version of Biblio-Refs is far more flexible and even more
feature rich. With the Win95 version, you can also (a) add annotations
to any/all references in the list, by typing or scanning in the selected notes;
(b) cut and paste references to presentations, manuscripts, term papers, theses,
dissertations, and other documents; (c) so easily add your own references to the
database; (d) print out the results of your Boolean and/or/not searches; (e)
protect your annotations and notes with a built-in password; and (f) be free of
reliance on busy library terminals and closed databases clogged with information
you do not need.
Just think for a
moment about being able to search for terms, for author- names, for specific
article titles or specific keywords -- searching for Abeson's quiet revolution,
for Terreberry's turbulent environments, Boren's bureaucratic creed, Weick's
loosely coupled systems, Cohen's garbage can organization model, Lipsky's
street- level bureaucrats, Lindblom's muddling through, Milgrim's familiar
stranger, Premack's principle, Campbell's threats to validity, Maslow's needs
hierarchy, Cremin's educative institutions, Platt's social traps, Lilly's
zero-reject model, Dunn's inverted pyramid model, Emery & Trist's
autochthonous change, Bloom's mastery learning, Wang & Walberg's adaptive
instruction, Dunns' learning styles, Cronback/Snow's aptitude-treatment
interaction, Gardner's cognitive controls, Braybrooke & Lindblom's
disjointed incrementalism, Gagne's learning hierarchies and advanced organizers ...
or what about pyramidal training, reinforcer sampling, theft reversal,
collateral shifts, spillover effects, social reciprocity, pica behavior,
misplaced precision, anticipant organization ... the exquisite
terminology, the literature, the authors, the concepts, the research outcomes --
you can get it all with Biblio-Refs. And you get a whole lot more with
your own, personalized, customized additions.
Copyright © 1995-2001 Dr
Charles Hedbring. All rights reserved worldwide.
310 Riverside Drive/Suite 1712, New York, NY 10025 ... 212/866-6694
Http://www.programsteppe.com
For more information, please
steppec@aol.com