Mindful Ink

Over the weekend, I received this email from Riley:

I’ve found your site very useful. I’ve started using many of the things you’ve advocated (expandable file folder, hipster PDA, Gradefix etc.)

One thing I have a problem with often is remembering what I read–or more specifically I remember what I read (or the general gist of it) but not WHERE I read it or who wrote it. And when I did finally find it (accidentally) about six months later when I really couldn’t use it anymore.

Do you have any ideas for dealing with this kind of thing? Being able to go back and find stories and parts of works that you’ve read?

I’ve though of starting a commonplace book and taking detailed notes of what I read–but it could still become unwieldy.

So any ideas? Do you already have a system for dealing with this sort of thing?

I was literally walking out the door when I got this, and it interested me enough to stop and write quite a bit back (much to the chagrin of my girlfriend.) This is one of those little bugaboos that a lot of students face, so I gave some thought to how this may best be defeated. And there are a LOT of answers, depending on your personal style. You could use an online document (from Google Docs or Zoho), write it down, or you could subscribe to an online bibliography tool (I like easybib). You could also use some of the online web-apps we’ve mentioned, particular Notely or some of those handy Facebook note applications.

Now, generally speaking… I like simple methods. I also don’t like creating new systems - I want to, whenever possible, to include whatever I’m doing in something I’m already doing. I don’t want to use another piece of software or doing something different each day if I don’t absolutely have to. I really suggest you do the same, the less “inboxes” you need to check and maintain- the better. Those of you familiar with the show Good Eats may be familiar with the host Alton Brown - he has a rather poor opinion of “uni-taskers” and I share it. There are specific tools for this sort of work (EndNote leaps to mind) and some of them are quite good, but unless you’re writing a thesis - you can probably make use of something easier.

We also need to define exactly what we need when we talk about this particular problem. We need: Title of the book, author probably, page range, and general idea of what it is about. Not a lot of info, really. And if you trust yourself to a pen and paper record, and then putting that record in somewhere safe - then just do that. I don’t trust anything to paper, myself. I lose paper. I lose paper very well.

Personally, I’ve used a program called Yojimbo for this before. I like Yojimbo a lot, but find I’m not using it much these days as its load-up time is disastrous, but often it is worth keeping open if I’m doing a lot of research as it is amazingly easy to put data into. It’s kind of my “loose file drawer” on my Mac. Still, it’s not the best solution for everyone (especially non-Mac users) And there’s no reason to pick this software up just for this.

But let’s try something different. This does require a cell phone with a camera (which didn’t help my friend Riley much) but I think it may the best way to do this quickly. And this can also be modified to work without the camera easily enough.

So, you’re in the library studying and you’ve a small mountain of books. You don’t think you’re going to use them, but just in case you want to have a record of them. Here’s what I’d suggest:

• Take a picture of the cover of the book - get a clear shot of the author and title.
• Email that picture to yourself (gmail is great for this.) Include the above info (subject, etc.) in the body of the msg. Almost any recent phone with a camera can also email, consult your manual (which, if you’ve lost, can almost always be found on your provider’s website.)
• When you get home, tag it with something like “reference.” Depending on how often you use this, creating some other tags specific to the project or class may be called for.

And there you go, a more or less permanent record of any reference material you come across - very searchable and accessible everywhere.

If you do like a more localized solution… Take the info out of the email and stick it into whatever local information system you use (Yojimbo, Curio, Onenote, etc.)

How about you? What system do you use? What would you recommend?

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