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Advice on research software
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Posted by Wayne K
Aug 17, 2013 at 02:10 PM
Bill, it’s interesting how you’ve been able to overcome one of Evernote’s weak points. For this particular project though, I think I"m going to need something different. Organizing will be paramount.
22111, what software are you referring to when you say there’s dedicated software and it’s expensive? I’m willing to get something expensive if needed (as long as we’re talking $500 expensive, not $50,000). For your examples, I would need both reports A and B. Some of what I need will emerge only after I get into the process of entering the notes. So I would need the ability to add fields after records are completed.
It’s been a long time since I’ve worked with this material so I’m not able to give you a laundry list of exactly what kind of output I want. I worked on this 25 years ago using a Kaypro II and a word processor. I did all the sorting manually. Those notes are still useful. I would like to upgrade what I did before and have all the material in a single program that I can use for research. When I’m done, I should be able to filter the material by any of the fields and create reports that summarizes all the testimony on any topic.
An example of a report would be “Indians’ first sighting of Custer”. The report would be similar to a spreadsheet with each row having the individual’s name, tribe, date the account was given, and a summary of what was said. This report could then be sorted by any of the headings (name, date, tribe, etc)
I’ve been assuming that I would try one of my PIMs for this project along with looking at ConnectText and maybe other academic research software. Then I saw the thread here titled “List of ALL info-managers with custom attributes!”. This thread included a list of free-form databases. I looked at some of these but didn’t do any trials. It set me to thinking that maybe I should be looking at a database solution. That’s what prompted this thread.
I’m probably not making myself clear. All I’m really asking is whether anyone has experience using a free-form database like Access to organize research notes. If so, how did it work out?
Posted by MadaboutDana
Aug 17, 2013 at 04:25 PM
Hi Wayne,
I’ve had experience of designing databases using both relational databases (like Access, which is certainly NOT free-form), and genuinely free-form databases (like Blackwell Idealist and, to a lesser extent, FileMaker, which comes into a category of its own for reasons I will explain).
You certainly could organise your research notes using a relational database like Access - as long as you know what you’re trying to achieve. At first glance, working methodology and draft structure you describe are compatible with a modern relational database, provided you know precisely what kinds of reports you’re going to want to generate.
However, be aware that configuring the database (or rather, multiple databases/data tables) to your requirements will be a fairly lengthy and potentially complex process. Furthermore, relational databases aren’t really optimal for searching through large quantities of text (although they’re great for assembling specific chunks of data according to specific output schemes). It all depends - as I’ve already said - on precisely what you want to achieve with the reports.
It sounds as if something like Blackwell Idealist would be better suited to your needs. But you would also do well to investigate systems like EndNote which, although it calls itself a citation manager, is actually rather more than that (this is true of most citation management software, in fact - they have become the equivalent of bibliographical databases, one of the greatest and best of which used to be Blackwell Idealist, now, alas, defunct).
If you like to devise and control your own output schemes, however, you could take a closer look at FileMaker (which has the additional advantage of being cross-platform). Although FileMaker is a relational database, in practice it has a number of features associated with other types of database. It can handle very large amounts of text, it is capable of running searches across all fields in a record simultaneously - but also of narrowing down/expanding a given set of search results - and it has a number of idiosyncratic features like the ability to manage multiple values in a single field. I’ve used all these features in various databases I’ve built in the past, including an admin database, a linked document management system, and various terminology databases (again, linked to the admin database).
If you want to customise your own DBMS, FileMaker Pro might well be the best way to go. You can download a trial from filemaker.com
Having said that, I would indeed recommend that you read Dr. Andus’s excellent ConnectedText tutorial, just in case you decide that the precision planning and extensive development time associated with a full-scale DMBS like FM Pro is not really your cup of tea…
Cheers,
The Other Bill
Posted by ML
Aug 17, 2013 at 04:38 PM
I may be able to help. I have founded a local history society for the small town and which is on-line only. Soon after I launched the website, with a view to it becoming an encyclopaedia, I was invited by a national publisher of local history books to write a book about the town. As you can imagine, there is a huge amount of information and while I had much content there were and still are numerous gaps in my own knowledge let alone research.
The style of the book is 90 old photos (sepia) with 90 photos (in colour) of the same scene today or thereabouts, with captions for each photo. The word ‘caption’ is a tad misleading, it is actually a short paragraph, about 6 lines of text. I wanted each caption to be informative and waffle-free, unlike some books in the same series where it is apparent the authors couldn’t think what to say about!
To collate the information for the captions, I had in mind to use Scrivener but after a while found it was a non-starter. The problem is key-wording and searching. For example, the word ‘church’ occurred dozens of times so a search would result in dozens of different entries. Using the outliner feature didn’t help: I could enter a parent topic Church A but would then have to drag and drop each child sub-section to A manually. Sorting is possible but again not ideal. As for random entries, I’d need to know which parent topic would apply first.
The last person to do a book on similar lines took a year to finish it, i had 3 months. Having whittled down the choice of old photos from the 300 or so I had gathered, it was then a question of in what order. I decided upon compass directions and starting outwards into the town centre and in each direction for the roads and streets in order so that the reader would have a pictorial experience with captions that would follow on naturally.
It would have helped had I read the publisher’s required layout for the book (book plan) before I finished so I didn’t have to start all over’ with just 24 hours to spare. However, thanks to the workflow I’d creating, the necessary changes were easy.
For the photos, I used Lightroom 4. I created 3 smart folders, search criteria on keyword. Folder1 contained the photos for the front and back covers and the introduction. Folder 2 the old photos and Folder 3 the new photos. As well as the keywords for each photos, I entered each photos number ( my choice of number, not software generated) in a spare field and prefixed with 0 for sorting, eg 001, 090, etc Having selected all the photos I made a copy of each and renamed them, suffix O for old and N for new. For example, High Street-4-07N, High Street-4-07O. (It was only after checking the book plan to make sure I’d compiled everything as required that I discovered the publishers wanted me to use suffix A and B!)
For the captions, I considered using Lightroom but it is not a word-processor and I should’ve need to know what I wanted to include as I went. What I needed was a sophisticated note-taker so I used Filemaker Pro’ database. I designed a layout with fields for all the info that I needed with sorting as well. I tried to have only one record for each topic but quickly gave up,because that meant searching each time I wanted to add new text. Having completed my research and added text to a caption field and with each record already containing the Lightroom image number, I sorted the database to whatever field order I wanted for a particular photo, cut and paste text from a notes field from records whose information was otherwise identical so that I ended up with one record for each pair of photos; that record containing all the info I need to write a caption for that pair of photos.
Having completed the captions in any order,depending upon my mood and the availability of info, I sorted the records to the sequential image number. The publishers wanted the caption in a word doc file so I copied the photo ref and caption onto a word processor, saved the file as .doc and that was that.
Posted by Wayne K
Aug 17, 2013 at 05:05 PM
Thanks, “Other” Bill. That’s what I was looking for. I think I’ll do a trial of Filemaker and set up a small sample database that I can experiment with.
Posted by Wayne K
Aug 17, 2013 at 05:09 PM
ML, I appreciate the detailed explanation of how you did your photo research. I’ll have to think about how I could apply some of your approach to my own text research. It sounds like you found Filemaker useful, which seconds Bill’s recommendation.