My friend Paul wanted to cite something on my blog for a final paper he’s writing.
“Can’t you make it so I can use Zotero on your blog?” he asked and then admitted he was asking if I could make something that would take him 2 minutes only end up taking 3 seconds.
I did some quick searching and found a number of COinS plugins for WordPress that would talk to citation apps like Zotero or Endnote.
In the end, I went with ScholarPress COinS and Paul was able to instantly collect the data from the post he was citing and make an easy in-text citation.
A couple of things have struck me about the whole process. One, it was about 3 minutes from search to install to make my blog more useful (to Paul, at least). Maybe more importantly was the realization that I now want all blogs and media to provide this type of data for more academic or scholarly work. Earlier this year, I engaged in an interesting search for the proper way to cite a single tweet in APA style.
More and more, I’m seeing (or at least calling for) a convergence between the online places I learn and the physical spaces where I’m called to answer for that learning. Providing metadata and recognizing there is usefulness in academic citation of those online spaces can only help to legitimate the important learning and writing going on there.