It’s also turned out to be useful having a very short citation code (i.e. I decided to maintain these file names to avoid any confusion. They are numbered sequentially and I reset the counter on my camera for each archive I visited. When importing, I chose not rename any of my photo files. 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.
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