Well, fast forward several decades and we arrive to this list of the best tools for researchers today. In addition to being able to saves text, audio, video and links during your research online you'll also be able to share these collections of notes with colleagues, students or anyone else. You can also keep things private for your own research projects. Here are just some of the tools every modern researcher needs:
Organizational Tools
iLeonardo is an impressive site for those interested in research. It's a social utility that connects people and their notebooks which are collections of information from the Web. iLeonardo combines search methodologies, social bookmarks and social networks to produce relevant search results and ranking determined by people - not bots or publishers.The name of the service is obviously an homage to the legendary renaissance man, Leonardo Da Vinci, who was famous for his notebook collection of research information, thoughts and ideas. ILeonardo and its notebook collection technology strives to help the Leonardo's of the digital age.
Google Notebook is a strange bird. It's like Google Docs mixed with Google Bookmarks. You can save just about anything you want while surfing the Web to any of your notebooks with a simple click. You can keep it private or share them. Not only does it save the content but also the link to the source for easy reference.
Zoho Notebook is similar to Google Notebook but minus some critical features that make Google the edge if you had to pick between these two services. Here's a short screencast that demonstrates the differences:
UberNote offers many ways to save your research notes: via a toolbar that you add to your browser, email, instant messenger, mobile device or even on their own website.
EverNote I know, I know, not EverNote again! They seem to appear on a list every week, but that's because it doesn't do just one thing. It's hard to describe everything EverNote does, but it does provide many features that would be useful to people interested in researching and taking notes online and on the go via a mobile device.
Browser Extensions & Addons
ClipMarks is the premier online clipmarking tool. You can save chunks of any webpage and share them too. There's a plugin for Firefox and Internet Explorer.
iLighter is simply a tool that lets you highlight portions of any webpage. You can then save those highlighted pages to your own notebooks on their site.
Twitterlights works with your iLighter account. Whatever you highlight and save can be sent to your twitter account automatically.
Dappadis a Firefox extension that lets you create notebooks in the firefox sidebar for easy access.
Scrapbook is an extension that mimics Opera's Notes feature. Cool features include highlighter and eraser.
WiredMarker is another extension that allows you to highlight parts of any website in different colors.
NetNotes is a Firefox add-on that lets you store notes on websites.
Conclusion