Knovel,a provider of online technical content for engineers, has added a variety ofpersonalization features aimed at helping users gather information morequickly, while allowing them to efficiently repurpose material for subsequentefforts.

The My Knovel enhancements enable engineers to betterorganize and manage saved content, while providing portability so engineers canaccess the digitally accumulated knowledge anywhere they have an Internetconnection. The personalization enhancements have been designed to reflect theway engineers traditionally work. Theidea was to digitally replicate the physical binder of go-to resources thatengineers create over time from handbooks, to materials property databases,math libraries and online searches, among other resources.

"We're setting up an infrastructure ... that is meant toreplace the hard copy of materials that engineers accumulate over the years,"says Diana Bittern, Knovel's director of productmanagement. "The big driver here is to give engineers a place where they canget one-click access to the things they use all the time."

The key to My Knovel is an updated access and authenticationsystem, which gives engineers entry to their customized portal. Onceauthenticated, users will be taken to a Knovel landing page, which ispersonalized and customized to reflect their past work, including any previousreference book selections, interactive tables or any saved searches.Previously, any research done on Knovel was lost once a user logged out,Bittern says.

New to My Knovel is the My Bookshelf feature, which letsengineers save and organize frequently-used titles into a folder; My SavedContent, which lets engineers save and organize content in individual folders;and My Saved Searches, which retains past search queries, allowing engineers tore-execute them with a single click.

Engineering teams with multiple Knovel users can tap the newcustomization features to better collaborate, sending links to share pastsearches or other archived material. Subsequent versions of the technology willinclude new social networking capabilities for expanded collaboration andcommunity, and engineers interested in future directions can check out Knovel Labs,where they can experiment with the technology and provide feedback.

Knovel Gets Personal