Classifying Research

Hello all,

Probably a simple problem, but I’m looking for thoughts. I’m working on a book right now and took Steve Berlin’s advice and started cataloging all of my research in Devonthink by source. In other words, I have a folder for each source (book, magazine, etc.) and separate note in that folder for quote or bundle of facts. It’s great so far.

What I’m doing now is classifying the notes into “subject” folders without losing track of the source of each. I’ve been replicating every note and then parsing them out by hand. But would there be an easier way to do this?

When I try auto-classify, it moves the notes, so I don’t know where they came from. To alleviate that, I’ve been creating a separate folder, replicating the notes into that folder, and then classifying from there. But that seems a little cumbersome. Would there be a way to “label” the notes maybe? (I know about the label function, but I have way more than seven sources.) That, I guess, is the goal really. To be able to shuffle around the quotes and facts and so on but still know which source each one came from.

Really any ideas would be helpful. Thanks in advance for the input.

Kevin

To get around the auto-classify problem (which doesn’t really seem a problem to me), why not write cites at the end of each note, or else into the Comments field?

I do the former (put a cite at the end of the note) but the latter would work also. And you could use the Applescript for writing comments to write the same cite (e.g. same source) as a comment to multiple note files.

Gotcha. I figured out the comments approach which seems to be working. I’m a complete neophyte when it comes to Apple Scripts but I’ll look into that too. Thanks for the tips.

Per auto-classify: it’s only a problem because I’d like to keep a “library” going–a series of folders with the quotes from their original sources. When I classify one with the auto-classify function it moves both the replication AND the original (or rather–it moves the source file and deletes the replication). I can duplicate the file and move the duplication. But seems strange that I can’t do the same with a replication.