Hi,
I’m new to DT and thought I’d seek some advice before setting up my database in a poor way and then having to change it later on. I’m mostly using it to integrate snippits from neuroscience papers. I presently use Bibdesk to organize papers and I was wondering how I could best do this in DT.
Would you reccommend a separate folder tree for papers? Or should I have papers corresponding to each group within that specific group? Also, would you reccommend saving pdfs or bookmarking each paper and viewing in safari (viewing in safari is nice because links to references within each snippit are active).
Any advice is helpful,
Thanks,
Dylan
If your experience is anything like mine, I think your database will naturally evolve as you work with it. In my case, I realised that I needed to be able to find all the items that dealt with a particular theme or subject area, and by a process of tagging and moving items into appropriate folders I am beginning to find connections between items and build up a picture of those themes. Personally, I would see the database as a fluid thing, as part of a process of understanding the material I collect. As you get used to the program, you will find ways of doing things that present the material in a way that suits you, and suits what you want to do with the material. And I think that last thing is the key: what you eventually want to do with the material will influence how you work with the database. But this is just my view, based on a fairly short experience of using the program. I am still learning what it will do. It’s a complex program, and it takes time to learn all its features and how to exploit them.
Best of luck with it,
Martin BB
PS: save the pdfs – web pages can change and move. It’s useful to “freeze” an article at the time you first find it. If somebody later takes out the thing that first caught your attention, you may find yourself wondering why you were ever interested in the article. That won’t be the case if you have the original version.
I have a separate folder on my computer that I use to store journal articles (by publication, not by theme or topic). I then use DTPO to index that folder (and then synchronise every now and then as I new articles).
What I like about this method is that I derive the utility from the DTPO feature set without having to rely on the application to retain the articles themselves.