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Academic Note Collection Project
caseykoons | Apr 18 2006
I'm a comparative religion student headed for grad school this coming fall. I've been thinking about and exploring a projected I'd like to do that I think would greatly benefit me both in grad school and in an academic career generally. I would like to create some kind of collection (I avoid the use of the word database deliberately) of all of my notes, papers, and other academic work that has: 1) Fairly easily assembly. The documents are in various forms (word, rtf, stw, even some Word Perfect files) 2) Easy update and the ability to edit these entries. 3) Powerful search and organization features, such as the links of a wiki or a concordance. I've explored various wiki options, such as MoinX and Instiki, but I've been turned off with how much time it would take to convert all of these documents into something the wiki could use. Especially those documents with footnotes. I recently heard about DEVONthink and while it looks interesting, I can't afford to buy any software that doesn't meet the projects goals exactly. Is there anyone who has faced a similar challenge? What tools (for the Mac OS) may I have overlooked? 24 Comments
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 I'll bump josh's question about...Submitted by emory on April 24, 2006 - 10:52am.
alan wrote:
I'll bump josh's question about how DevonThink fits into folks' workflow. These days I find myself filing "stuff" across three applications: BibDesk, a snippet journal in TextMate, and various outlines in OOPro. The latter two are the problematic elements of my system, in that it's hard to really keep track of everything systematically. I've considered putting together something like a wiki-based log of all that activity, so that I don't lose whatever weak ties I'm putting together, but I'm wary of adding *another* application to the pile (Voodoopad, maybe? A local instiki? I don't know). Is DevonThink something that could cut out all those apps? I think DEVONthink could be used for all of that. If you only want basic outlining, DEVONthink Pro does that too. It can also use WikiWords for easy note-taking. You could always download a trial of DEVONthink, throw all Your Stuff into it, and see what happens. Visit the Preferences first and set it to import copies of documents into the Database or Database Folder so you don't injure things on the live filesystem while you test it out. » POSTED IN:
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