[OWW-Discuss] I'm just launching into some updated reading for an old project and I'm looking at a better way to collect my notes together...

[Tom Knight]

Some things to think about:
* spotlight in Mac OSX 10.4+ will index pdf files, so if you have 
text-under-pdf documents, you can retrieve the information using a 
spotlight search.
* Papers, a program for the Mac.  I haven't tried this, but it sounds 
good: http://mekentosj.com/papers/

I've given up entirely on paper.  I print papers to read them, and view 
the printed version as completely disposable.

You need a way to scan and OCR documents into PDF format if they are 
not already there.  Scanning is relatively easy.  Our new Xerox copiers 
will OCR documents as they are scanned, and then email the result to 
you.
The HP "Digital Sender" was, prior to this, my favorite scanner, which 
also emailed.
The  OCR program which works is the (Windows) Abbyy Finereader.
If you use a Mac, you also need a copy of PDFLAB (free) which is very 
useful to "adjust" PDF permissions.



On Jan 5, 2008, at 6:04 PM, John Cumbers wrote:

> Hi all,
> So I'm halfway through my PhD and I'm just launching into some updated 
> reading for an old project and I'm looking at a better way to collect 
> my notes together.  I'm hoping that there is a great new tool 
> available that someone can tell me about to make my life easier... or 
> at least a better strategy that someone has found to do this sort of 
> research by...
>
> I want something to collect notes from meetings with my supervisor, 
> experiments I plan to do, notes from reading, diagrams, references.  
> Ideally something that would show me a list of notes I've taken, in 
> chronological order and also searchable via tags.
>
> Here are a few strategies that have not worked that well in the past.
> Find papers via pubmed/hubmed/scholar
> add papers to citeulike, many never end up getting read.
> print out a few key pdf's on paper
> go through these, make notes on the paper itself, make notes on 
> scratch paper
> Write up key things on more scratch paper. 
> File some of the PDF's via citeulike ID number in filing cabinet...  
> never to be looked at again..  get on with lab work
> or... create stack of unsortable papers, get on with lab work
> Lose papers in mass of other papers.  lose notes.
> repeat.
>
> Next best thing might be a paper notebook like a lab book. But this 
> gets equally as messy, although I could repeat this with an index to 
> be move successful.  But a paper book is not easily searchable.  What 
> about a word doc... argh... can you imagine...  maybe there are better 
> tools for Mac or Unix, but I'm currently mostly on a PC.
>
> Can you help? Do you have a better strategy, or tool to recommend?  
> I've googled a few times for things like this but never found anything 
> satisfactory.
>
> Cheers,
> John
>
>
>
>
>
>
> -- 
>  John Cumbers,  Graduate Student
> Biology and Medicine
> Brown University, Box G-W
> Providence, Rhode Island, 02912, USA
> Tel USA: +1 401 523 8190,  Fax: +1 401 863-2166
> UK to USA: 0207 617 7824_______________________________________________
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