Platform for generating, managing and sharing content clippings and associated citations

Abstract

A content management system allows users to capture content from content sources, such as web pages and hardcopy publications, using a client application that runs on user devices such as a personal computer or mobile device. The client application creates bibliography citations for captured content by gathering information from and/or about the content sources. Captured content and corresponding citations can be uploaded to a remote system that provides functionality for users to search for content clippings. The client application can include a document editor that facilitates importation of captured content and bibliography citations into documents being edited. In some embodiments, the system also uses social network connections between users to facilitate sharing of content.

What is claimed is: 
     
         1 . A system that implements a service for assisting users in locating reference materials, comprising:
 an electronic data repository that stores content clippings and associated citations and metadata tags, said content clippings uploaded to the electronic data repository by clipping modules that run on user computing devices of a plurality of users of the service, said citations identifying source references from which the content clippings were obtained, said metadata tags including text that is descriptive of the corresponding content clippings; and   a computing system comprising one or more computing devices, said computing system programmed to use the metadata tags and citations to generate, for particular users of the service, recommendations of reference materials related to particular topics.   
     
     
         2 . The system of  claim 1 , wherein the computing system is programmed to analyze a document of a user, and to generate, based on said metadata tags and citations, recommendations of particular reference materials related to the document. 
     
     
         3 . The system of  claim 1 , wherein the computing system is additionally configured to use social network connections between the users to implement a content clipping sharing policy in which users selectively share uploaded content clippings with other users. 
     
     
         4 . Non-transitory computer storage that stores a mobile application that provides functionality for generating citations using photographic images of reference materials, the mobile applications comprising executable instructions that direct a mobile computing device to perform a process that comprises:
 determining a code from a photograph of a bar code of a printed publication, said code identifying the printed publication;   generating a textual representation of a user-selected content portion of the printed publication, wherein generating the textual representation comprises applying Optical Character Recognition to a photographic image of the user-selected content portion;   retrieving information regarding the printed publication using said code;   generating a bibliographic citation for the content portion using the retrieved information regarding the printed publication; and   storing the content portion in association with the bibliographic citation.   
     
     
         5 . The non-transitory computer storage of  claim 4 , wherein the code is an ISBN code obtained the bar code. 
     
     
         6 . The non-transitory computer storage of  claim 4 , wherein the mobile application includes a user interface and associated functionality for inserting the content portion and bibliographic citation into a user-selected document. 
     
     
         7 . The non-transitory computer storage of  claim 4 , wherein the mobile application is configured to automatically upload the content portion and bibliographic citation to a remote document management system in association with a user account. 
     
     
         8 . The non-transitory computer storage of  claim 4 , wherein the mobile application includes a user interface for user entry of comments to be stored in association with the content portion. 
     
     
         9 . A computing system comprising one or more computing devices, said computing system programmed to implement a process for enabling users to share and locate content clippings, said process comprising:
 receiving, via an electronic communication network, a plurality of content portions and corresponding bibliography citations from clipping modules that run on user computing devices of a plurality of users, the content portions including metadata tags that describe the content portions, said metadata tags including user-generated metadata tags entered by users using a user interface of the clipping modules;   storing the received content portions and bibliography citations in data storage; and   using the metadata tags to automatically identify uploaded content portions that are related to each other.   
     
     
         10 . The computing system of  claim 11 , wherein the metadata tags additionally include auto-generated metadata tags generated by the clipping modules. 
     
     
         11 . The computing system of  claim 11 , wherein the content portions include user-selected clips of web pages, and the bibliographic citations include auto-generated citations generated at least partly by automatically scanning the web pages for attributes to include in the citations. 
     
     
         12 . The computing system of  claim 11 , further comprising receiving, storing, and publishing user-specified ratings of particular content portions, such that the users can rate particular content portions and share their ratings with other users. 
     
     
         13 . The computing system of  claim 11 , wherein the process further comprises selectively exposing particular ones of said content portions to subsets of the users based on social networking connections formed between the users. 
     
     
         14 . The computing system of  claim 11 , wherein the process further comprises responding to a user request to insert a selected content portion into a selected document by automatically inserting the content portion together with a corresponding bibliography citation and one or more corresponding metadata tags. 
     
     
         15 . The computing system of  claim 11 , wherein the process further comprises using the metadata tags to select content sources to recommend to users. 
     
     
         16 . The computing system of  claim 11 , wherein the process further comprises responding to user-submitted search queries by using the metadata tags to locate content clippings that are responsive to the search queries.