![]() ![]() I recreate the archive’s filing system in my Devonthink database. The OCR capability is a fantastic convenience, but not a research methodology. There’s no way that I consider my project as a ‘big data’ study: I’ve read every document in my library. That’s good enough to be a useful tool alongside the tagging and grouping I’ve done, but not accurate enough to rely on to draw reliable conclusions from. I’d say it’s roughly 65% correct for my data. I’m lucky that most of the archival material for my project is type-written on white paper, which means the Optical Character Recognition (OCR) of my archive pictures is quite accurate, but certainly isn’t perfect. I imported these files to Devonthink and converted them into a searchable PDF format (which took quite some time). These photos (thousands!) are saved in a file structure that carefully replicates the archive box and folder system to avoid any citation confusion in years to come. I used a digital camera to take pictures of all the material I needed in the archives. Most of the important features are intuitive, but if you are comfortable with how the software works you can organize and sift through your data in some powerful ways. It’s worth spending some time getting to know Devonthink. Now there’s no need to store Office files, PDFs, bookmarks or other information in separate apps. Here’s the accurate software description from the Devonthink website:Ĭollect, store, work: Your Mac paperless officeĭEVONthink saves all your documents, keeps them organized, and recalls them whenever you need them. With all your files and notes in the same place, you can focus on organizing your thoughts and generating writing ideas. There are different packages, but I really think the Office Pro version – the bells-and-whistles version – is worth the price tag ($150, education discount available).ĭevonthink isn’t just a nice way to store your files, it’s also designed to help you make sense of it all in a number of different ways. It can hold the many file types associated with a large project, text files, pictures, PDFs, spreadsheets, etc. What’s Devonthink actually for? It’s software that allows you to create your own database containing all the digital material you might need to work on a large writing project (in my case a history PhD). Alongside Devonthink’s sorting features, I’m very happy with these features, and I’m confident that I went with the right software for my research/writing style. Over time I’ve learned to love Devonthink’s interface: I like seeing my file structure tree, it somehow helps me remember where things are. ![]() ![]() Perhaps irrationally, I wanted the files and software to be on my computer, and not in the cloud on Evernote’s servers. I liked how the database could sit on top of my local files, which means I’m always in control of the original files. Intelligent – pdf text recognition, search, and ‘relevancy’ sort featuresĪs the title of the post suggests, I went with Devonthink.Visual – uses intuitive folder structure.Standalone – doesn’t require internet connection.Search functions – powerful discovery solutions.Cloud-based – data stored in a server farm.Foolproof – nothing to break or go wrong.No cost – no fancy software solution required.These are the solutions that I seriously considered: Back-ups – Data must be safe, fool-proof to back up, and easy to restore if anything goes wrong.Tagging – A way to tag files and folders with different labels so they can be displayed in different contexts.Documents need to be easy to find, ideally in a number of different ways. Retrieval – A filing system that makes sense.Storage – A way to store thousands of files of varying sizes and formats.This post is about how I use Devonthink to organize my archival data, books, journal articles, and notes for my history PhD dissertation. I did.īefore I dived into my history PhD I considered how I would set up a system to store and retrieve the information I would gather over my multi-year project. When you start a new writing project you should spend some time thinking about how to organize the data you will find, the notes you will take, and the drafts you will create. ![]()
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