Posted by matthew on Sep 11, 2004 in
eroleplay.net More reference material fun as I try to figure out what the story is with Endnote. It turns out that it’s relatively easy (if not entirely intuitive) to export citations into Endnote. I’m curious about a couple of things — like, is it normal to build up just one Endnote Library? I’m trying to consolidate all of my materials here, so I guess I will export the library to HTML to go on a bibliography page here, but I will also need it in Endnote’s native format to use the Cite While You Write feature. Unfortunately this feature doesn’t currently support Word 2004, which is annoying, because I just removed Word X from my laptop. Ah well.
Posted by matthew on Sep 11, 2004 in
eroleplay.net,
research,
roleplays A couple of articles turned up from that ProQuest search that I’m going to take a look at:
Posted by matthew on Sep 11, 2004 in
education,
eroleplay.net,
research,
roleplays Today I decided to give the University’s Link Generator a try. I decided that if I am going to try to collect together useful articles, along with bibliographic information, I need to settle on a method of organising things pretty early. The Link Generator does a good job of storing links to articles in one place, and if it works, it makes more sense for me to collect article links there than try to duplicate them here. On the other hand, I sort of like the idea of having my own links here (for searchability and integration with other stuff) so it’s an open question right now.
I started with a search on ProQuest — no particular reason other than I had heard of it before. I used the terms role and playing and online to see what it would turn up. Around 217 hits. I went through and marked anything that looked like it related to higher education or something more general that was of interest, and got it down to 27 articles. Unfortunately on closer inspection almost all of these have very little to do with computer-based or online role-plays at all, so I will either need to improve my searching skills if I’m not going to waste a fair bit of time.
I decided I should look closely at a few higher education journals and search them for online role-play stuff too. All of this is just to get a background picture of what’s going on with online role-plays rather than looking at the more central theoretical issues, but I feel as though it’s time I went back and did some basic literature stuff like this, if only just to get back into the habit of reading. It’s also giving me a chance to test out things like the Link Generator and this blog, so I think it’s worth it.
Posted by matthew on Sep 10, 2004 in
eroleplay.net,
research Meanwhile I’ve been turning the house upside down trying to find a particular bunch of notes I was working with a few months back. I want to go back through everything and put the most useful notes up here. I think somewhere here there’s a folder with my handwritten notes and some readings. Tantalisingly, I found the folder of stuff from the CHC project, and thought I’d struck it lucky. Sadly, no. I’ll keep looking over the weekend.
Posted by matthew on Sep 10, 2004 in
eroleplay.net Today I added a couple of features that I really think are going to be handy. First of all I installed the tracker module that provides a handy list of recent posts that can be sorted chronologically, or by title and node type. One of the main purposes of setting this site up was to be able to find my notes quickly and easily. The other nice thing I discovered by chance was this little PHP mod that allows custom blocks to make lists based on taxonomies. That’s allowed me to put a new block up on the right there — Latest Notes. I may yet improve this.
Posted by matthew on Sep 8, 2004 in
eroleplay.net I’ve decided it’s time I tried using a blog*. I decided that if I was going to have a blog, it should have a useful purpose. At the same time, I am looking for a way to organise my thinking around the area of role-plays, so hopefully this will be a useful tool that will help me gather resources for my MA thesis.
*This was the first post of my thesis work log on www.eroleplay.net (password protected)