Mendeley has a vision: to change the the way we do research, for all researchers!

Today’s guest blog post comes from Olayinka Fatoki, who works in Information Science at the University of Ibadan in Nigeria. Olayinka tells us how she is sharing Mendeley with researchers and shares some of the feedback she’s received after her workshops.

In March 2014, I was in a training room during the TEEAL/AGORA workshop at the Kenneth Dike Library of the University of Ibadan, when I first heard of Mendeley. The facilitator took a group of researchers and librarians through a session on using the reference manager to organize citations and manage their references. I was fascinated by the power of this tool and the electrifying applause from the participants at the end of the session.

Information Training and Outreach Centre for Africa (ITOCA) through partnerships with institutions in Nigeria organizes 3-day workshops which highlights Research4Life programmes, The Essential Electronic Agricultural Library (TEEAL) and Reference Management software, Mendeley. As the Training and Outreach Officer for ITOCA in Nigeria, the responsibility of delivering training sessions on Mendeley soon fell on me and so I had to learn expressly and became conversant with the application. Mendeley is easy to learn and use especially with the different user guides available. At each of the TEEAL/AGORA workshops, with at least thirty-five participants, I have discovered more about Mendeley features and the saving grace it brings to researchers.

As a researcher myself, I use Mendeley for my work and have also organized training for PHD students, and lecturers in my faculty. Fifteen workshops and several training sessions down the line, I am always very happy to see the relief, excitement and brightened up faces after each Mendeley session.

Some of the testimonies shared by participants at the end of different Mendeley training sessions are as follows:

“I think Mendeley is great. The fact that a search and reference tool like this exists beats my imagination. It’s great for research.”

“I have had Mendeley for six years but I have just discovered it is a unique program, that I am able to download and keep my download in it as a backup for my work is unique. It is an essential tool for me as a researcher.”

“Mendeley experience has opened a novel pathway for literature search, archiving and retrieval. Thus making research reporting easy and fun. Thanks to the MENDELEY TEAM!”

“Excellent tool for management of references. How I wish I could have been introduced to this immediately I enrolled for my postgraduate study. It will definitely help and boost my writing.”

“Mendeley is the best thing that happened to me in the world of referencing. I simply love it!”

It gets better when participants from these workshops send in exciting stories about how they have been sharing the knowledge about Mendeley with friends and colleagues. Gradually and steadily, as more and more researchers and librarians learn about Mendeley, the way we do research indeed is changing – Thanks to Mendeley!