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Advice on research software
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Posted by Wayne K
Aug 16, 2013 at 09:46 PM
I appreciate the many excellent posts on this forum. I’m hoping to get some advice on how to handle an upcoming research project on the Battle of the Little Big Horn.
There is a huge amount of source material available on this topic. I’d like to create a database that will allow me to filter and sort the material in different ways. Text will be broken up into short sections so they can be easily re-arranged. Each text segment will have the usual basic fields (tags) such as author, title, date, etc. Each text segment could be assigned to dozens of topic fields.
I have several PIMs (Ecco Pro, Rightnote, Tree Projects, Cinta Notes etc). Maybe one would be appropriate for this job but I worry that they’re going to be overwhelmed by the volume of material (tens of thousands of records). What PIM would be up to a task like this or should I be looking at a database like Access?
I realize that what I’m asking has been covered in various ways on many different threads. I’m not asking for a rundown of all the software options. I’m stuck on the issue of PIM vs database and am hoping to avoid going down the wrong path and wasting time. Any thoughts would be appreciated.
Wayne
Posted by Stephen Zeoli
Aug 17, 2013 at 12:20 AM
Have you read Dr Andus’s excellent blog about how he uses Connected Text for this kind of work. If you have not, you can find it here:
Steve Z.
Posted by Wayne K
Aug 17, 2013 at 12:29 AM
Yes, Steve, I’ve read his blog. I may very well go with ConnectedText but I was hoping to get some feedback on whether anyone has tried to use a regular database program for the kind of work I’m describing. I’m thinking it wouldn’t be the right tool based on the database examples I’ve looked at. They seem to lend themselves to organizing information that is easily formatted into lists. I just wondered if they can also be used as I’ve described to organize research notes.
Posted by WSP
Aug 17, 2013 at 07:13 AM
I’ve tried various kinds of note-taking software through the years for writing books, but at the moment Evernote is my preferred solution. Just last week, for example, I was studying a large body of archival material at a library a considerable distance from home. Fortunately the library allowed me to use my iPhone camera, and I took as many pictures as possible, combining the images into PDF files with an app called CamScanner.
Now that I’m back home, I pop those PDFs into Evernote, which indexes them all very efficiently. In many cases I also create additional notes on this material in Evernote (i.e., I place the PDF on the left side of my screen and Evernote on the right side). I OCR the PDFs in PDF-Xchange before I embed them in Evernote, but strictly speaking that’s not necessary, because Evernote does its own recognition. (It even recognizes handwriting, though not very reliably.)
In fact, even when I’m sitting in my study or in a library closer to home, I often snap a picture of a paragraph or two in a book or journal, and within a few minutes after I insert that photo in Evernote, the text becomes searchable. I find that this approach saves me a lot of time otherwise devoted to typing.
Organization is not Evernote’s strength (though note-taking certainly is), but I’ve found a solution that works more or less satisfactorily. I create links to individual notes (very easy to do) and insert them into a note called “Outline: Chap. 1,” etc. There they can be manipulated into something resembling a traditional outline if that’s what you want.
Bill
Posted by 22111
Aug 17, 2013 at 12:47 PM
We know there’s dedicated software for it, and we know it’s expensive. Since you post here, let’s assume you don’t want such a solution.
Then let’s clarify your needs, since there are several solutions but not necessarily for every demand.
If I understand your problem, you’ll have records in the form
header paragraph
some paragraph, coded a, c, d
some other paragraph, coded c, d, f
and many other paragraphs, coded d, f, m, p… in any combination
another record with its header
some paragraph, coded n
some other paragraph, coded a, n, t
and so on
Let’s assume, you’ll have 5,000 of such records.
Now you need “reports”, in the form A?:
“All records containing paragraphs that are coded a, or coded n, AND coded f, but not coded t”
So you need Boolean search in order to identify records containing paragraphs coded in a specific way.
Result would be a records list here.
But perhaps you also need “reports”, in the form B?:
“All paragraphs coded a, or coded n, AND coded f, but not coded t; together with an indication of their source”
So here you need a gathering function putting all your paragraphs (not records) in a list, meaning the respective paragraphs only (but not the other paragraphs in those records), but together with the respective “header” of the record containing each paragraph.
Do you need “report” A? And/or B? Others?
What forms of “reports” would be mandatory, which forms would just be “good to have”?