DTP workflow to work with physical, paper books?

[thor]

After searching and reading a number of threads here, it seems like the majority of DT users prefer to scan/OCR or otherwise digitize the material they want to add to DT.

I still buy and read paper books, much prefer them to electronic versions (there is research showing that learning and retention are also much better with physical books compared to electronic, but I’ll leave that discussion for another time).

My DTP databases consist largely of PDFs, research articles and similar, which is fine, no problem there. However I also buy and read books on relevant subjects, and wonder what approach others have tried in order to include notes and references to parts you find interesting, summaries, quotes or references to specific passages and pages.

Back in prehistoric times, I would read and make notes in a notebook, or margins of the book, or use post-it notes to add thoughts and commentary and stick it to the relevant pages. I expect I could do something similar with DTP, although am not thrilled at the prospect of having a digital device open and ready to use while reading a book. I’ll try using DTTG on the iPad and see how that works, maybe pausing when I hit something important and jot it down as a note in DT before going back to the book.

I’d like to know in any case how others deal with this, if they do. Where and how do you add notes or info about non-digital content and structure it so that you can find it and use it later?

Thanks!

[DTLow]

@thor

I would read and make notes in a notebook, or margins of the book, or use post-it notes to add thoughts and commentary and stick it to the relevant pages.

No reason you can’t continue this process
I would then use the iPad’s scan document feature to digitize the paper annotations
Stored/organized in DTTG as pdf files

fwiw I’m a fan of using DTTG on my iPad for notes, scans, photos, sketches, …

[BLUEFROG]

Well, it’s likely you have your phone (or an iPad), so depending on your perspective, you could long-press DEVONthink To Go’s icon and…

• Choose New Note to write something down in one of the native formats.
• Choose New Media to either take a new picture or import one from Photos. You can type up notes as Finder Comments before you commit the picture to your database…

[kewms]

What do you ultimately want to use the notes for?

If they’re tied to a book that you personally own, then the book itself may provide a better index than DT ever could. Maybe make a summary note with a bibliographic reference in DT, but that’s it.

[thor]

Thanks for the suggestions and comments.

DTLow, I’d prefer to avoid scanning in post-it notes and notebook notes. I’m the only one who can read my handwriting, which limits it’s utility. It does seem to me that many users are enamored by the ability to scan in all sorts of things, but I think some things are better when digital, and some better left analogue.

Bluefrog, that’s a neat idea, I’ll try it next time I’m reading a book. Give me an excuse to use the iPad a bit more, it tends to get neglected. Will see how that works.

Kewms, I want to use the notes to be able to go back and find source information easily and quickly. Say I’m putting together an article or presentation, and I remember I read something about the topic that would be relevant (or forgot, but can search my database and it will show up). I can do a search, find my note with high level overview and related thoughts, then go to the book, page and paragraph to read it and see if I want to use it and how. Basically as a short summary and pointer to the actual paragraph on a specific page in a book. Some of the books I’m reading are 1000 pages or more, I’d rather just pull out interesting or key tidbits to pop into DTP for later.

As an example, when I was a grad student I would often take notes while reading course material, or some of my friends over in the faculty of law would use little coloured tabs to scribble keywords on as well as sticky notes to help organize the books they would read. Back in the very old days, I would take notes by hand in lectures and while reading the textbooks, and then re-write them into the computer in the evening and organize/clean them up in the process. Not sure I want to spend that much time these days, but do want to keep reading books and make sure that somehow key takeaways and important (to me) ideas and reflections get logged somewhere for use later.

Will try out some of this and experiment a bit.

[rfog]

I have a lot of approaches to this.

1.- If it is an e-book, I convert it to PDF with some custom stuff (here: Cosas Mías: De ePub a PDF. Así lo hago yo). Sometimes I read it in DT and annotate it. If I read in Kindle/Whatever, then export the annotations and then link the annotations with the PDF.

2.- Physical novels or other non-essential stuff: photo, handwriting and send to a “monthly annotations PDF”. After the end of month, OCR of the PDF and edit it to add DT links if needed.

3.- Reference or technical PDF books, magazines and web scraps converted into PDF: annotate on a copy of them. Use some scripts created here to extract annotations into MD files. Once a week, I “compact” those exported annotations into general MD files (Science History, Jules Verne, Cosmology…)

4.- Physical books (reference, annotated editions, …). Find the PDF facsimile version (or e-book if there is no PDF) to match the annotations. Anywhere (ahem!). Annotate in a copy of the PDF and follow the steps in 2/3 depending on if I handwrite them.

5.- For some physical books, I want MY own PDF copy, then I use a pedal book scanner to do it. Sometimes I have physical books (mostly old Jules Verne ones, and other old crap), I wanted in electronic form just in case a disaster happens. Same steps than in 4.

(I prefer facsimile versions because it is very common that e-book versions come “modified” from original versions. For example, I purchased an Asimov novel in Spanish written in neutral genre, having the same exact book and edition in paper, and it wasn’t (Obviously, when Asimov wrote that book, he wouldn’t even know the neuter genre, and if he did, he would pass it through the lining of his balls). Worse than that, I purchase a Rickard Dawkins e-book because physical mine was in Spain (and I’m in The Netherlands). It was so different to what I remembered, that in my next trip to Spain I brougth my edition and… they were completely different!!! Te electronic version was a lot less critical with religion!!! And those from purchased e-books. I don’t want to know what is in the ones got somewhere. Since then, if I want a book I want to valorate, I purschase it in phyisical form (prefereably an old edition) and scan it if I want it in my DT, or get the facsimile edition).

[suavito]

I do read a lot of paper books and I do have a workflow that’s close to perfect—for my needs, of course. At least it’s so much better than writing all down in paper notebooks.

A crucial part in my opinion is the “identifier” for the books quoted. Of course you could write down the complete title for every excerpt, but that would be tedious. And there are apps for that: reference/bibliography managers. Mine is Bookends. I have tested others but found it to be the best on the Apple side of the universe (again: for my needs).

For a while now I have been scanning the barcode of every new book I have purchased with Bookends To Go on my iPhone. I need to give the fetched data a bit of make-over, but all in all it works really well. It’s fast and it syncs between mobile devices and my Mac.

When I quote from one of the books in Bookends I do not copy a full citation but a temporary one, e. g. {Smith and Duff, 2021 #167340}. In a text for an editor or such Bookends will replace it by the full citation in the requested format (Harvard, Oxford, etc.).

First I used the citations only with my clipboard manager Paste. Besides the normal clipboard history it has pinboards which permanently keep content and can be dedicated to whatever you need them for, like code snippets, or Bookends temporary citations. Again, it syncs over all my devices, and on iOS/iPadOS it has a keyboard for the clipboard and the pinboards.

But I was even too lazy for that. Along came Drafts, my note taking app on all devices, including the Apple Watch. Drafts works with user programmable actions. I can launch my Reference action right from the log screen. An earlier versions held a list of books but since I prefer serial reading I switched to an action with just the one book I’m presently reading (it saves me picking from the list when there is no list).

The workflow is super simple and super fast: When launched a menu pops up with the focus in the field for the page number and then I can chose wether I want to dictate (my usual choice for short quotes), or to scan (for longer quotes), or to write, or to use the content of the clipboard. The action creates a Markdown note with the quote and adds a footnote like [^ref]: {Smith and Duff, 2021 #167340@27} to it. And it adds the tag “excerpt”.

Later I will send all excerpts and other notes with another action into DEVONthink’s Global Inbox. A Smart Rule will remove the “excerpt” tag and set the label “excerpt” instead (because I use tags for the content and not for the type of items). When I find the time I will expand the Smart Rule to detect the content of the ‘ref’ footnote and copy its content into the “source” custom metadata field.

Why a footnote, you might ask, since (Multi)Markdown notes allow metadata fields like “source”. While I am still undecided if I should have the Drafts action (or the DEVONthink Smart Rule) add the reference to the note metadata too, there is a good reason for the footnote: When I import the Markdown notes into my (rich text) writing program Scrivener the footnotes stay footnotes that hold the references. Later on Bookends will replace the temporary citations in Scrivener’s compiled output.

… Well, you asked.

[anonny]

I am currently using https://highlightsapp.net/ . I had been using marginnote for a long time but got tired of it messing up syncs and also even just “losing” notes. It also allows importing individual notes from the pdf into devonthink which you may then organize. I work a lot with epubs since the text is better, but you can always convert them to pdf… Once you have the individual notes linked to the pdf, you can move them around into a folder outline, or add metadata.

As to the why not physical books? You know how heavy books are to travel with? lol… I can’t afford to take my library with me everytime I go someplace… nor do I want to when I can have them all on my laptop.

[analogue_man]

Could you elaborate a bit on why you prefer Highlights above the internal pdf viewer of DEVONthink? I read a lot of praise on Highlights in the past weeks and after reading many forum posts I am still not sure if the subscription model is worth it. DEVONthink also offers differently coloured highlights and attached notes that you can extract to a markdown or RTF document.

[anonny]

The most important thing for me is to be able to create notes that I can recombine into an outline through the use of replicants.
Something like the Zettelkasten method.

I have notes which I use LLM to create metadata for, example:

---

Title: The Strategic Value of Identifying a Specific Target Market

Headings:
  - [[Target Market]]
  - [[Market Segmentation]]
  - [[Business Strategy]]
  - [[Consumer Engagement]]

Tags: marketing, business strategy, consumer behavior, market segmentation, efficiency, engagement, precision


---
Note stuff

The devonthink pdf editor doesn’t allow me to split notes easily (not that I know of), so I use highlights. It’s easy… I clean up stuff in the notes using textsoap if I don’t like the formatting of something. .

Then, I run the individual notes through LLM and get the metadata, I use a script to automatically insert the metadata and tada!

juangrukat - Overview

here’s a few things I’m using currently

[troejgaard]

@anonny

The devonthink pdf editor doesn’t allow me to split notes easily (not that I know of)

Well, this thread is about workflows with physical books, but maybe check out this script:

Script to create individual Markdown notes from PDF annotations

Here’s a script that creates individual Markdown notes for annotations contained in one or more selected PDFs: For each of the PDFs selected in DEVONthink, this script will iterate over its contained PDF annotations and create or update a Markdown record for each markup or text annotation. The URL of each Markdown record will be set to a deep link that directly points to the corresponding PDF annotation. I.e., clicking this deep link will open the associated PDF and scroll the corresponding …

[anonny]

I did see that, but I have to do all the metadata stuff. I’m too lazy for that.

This thread is for physical books, so the only think I can suggest is index cards, then copy stuff into dt?

But that’s just adding a step of work.

I just need to be reminded of the concepts I’ve read in order to do write stuff. I don’t want to muck about with all the intricacies of note creation.

In my view the job of a note is to be useful when you need an idea. I want the note to work for me, I don’t want to work for the note.

[msteffens]

@anonny

I did see that, but I have to do all the metadata stuff. I’m too lazy for that.

Just a quick clarification: If your PDF metadata, the PDF first page or its DT custom metadata contain a DOI, the script will also fetch all the bibliographic metadata, and can also fetch a formatted citation as well as BibTeX data for the publication.

[kewms]

@anonny

I did see that, but I have to do all the metadata stuff. I’m too lazy for that.

Please be very cautious if you choose to combine laziness with extensive use of LLMs.

[anonny]

I learned this early on working with gpt. I don’t trust it at all, so I always verify, and do step by step checking. Just now, I was hampered by it adding double spaces after a — which meant that a script wasn’t working on it properly…
Then I turned on invisible characters, and saw the problem…

[celsee]

There are a lot of good options for you here. Many far beyond the field. Why not just make a note about whatever and cite to the book and page? You have the book, so write the note. If you need the reference, it’s on your shelf. Or in whatever library you checked it out of.

[MsLogica]

I still read a lot of physical books. I don’t take digital notes while reading, I found it just interrupted what I was doing and then I’d get distracted by my phone/ipad and end up doing something else, which defeated the point.

So, I’ve gone back to just focusing on the reading and annotating the book as I go (I am a monster who annotates with a pen). Once I’ve finished reading the book, I go through it and type up all the notes (the pen means the markings stand out easily and I can just flip through to each page that’s annotated). That includes quotes, marginalia, any thoughts I’ve had while typing up the notes. I include page references. I have a standard naming scheme for these files and all my book notes are organised the same way.

I don’t keep all the physical books I read, so my notes are intended to “keep” the bits of the book I found useful and to replace the physical copy if I’m not keeping it. Really good books, really useful books, and heavily annotated books tend to be kept since it’s likely I will need them again.

This is actually how I did it when I was keeping my notes in a physical notebook, so I’ve basically done a full circle and ended up with the same process as I previously had, just in Markdown/DT now. Hopefully I learnt something along the way and trying to change process wasn’t a waste of time…

[rfog]

@MsLogica

So, I’ve gone back to just focusing on the reading and annotating the book as I go (I am a monster who annotates with a pen).

Yes, you are.

@MsLogica

I don’t keep all the physical books I read, so my notes are intended to “keep” the bits of the book I found useful and to replace the physical copy if I’m not keeping it. Really good books, really useful books, and heavily annotated books tend to be kept since it’s likely I will need them again.

In my experience, I’ve found a second reading of the same book can invalidate some notes/thoughts/marginalia (including some WTF did I wrote this crap? (*)) and or generate new thoughts. I use to maintain facsimile PDF editions of my books and the physical ones forever.

(*) My edition of Boorstin’s The Discoverers (in Spanish) has been read about 14 times, and it is a collection recursive marginalia of marginalia, annotations of annotations, WTFs over WTFs across years.

[tudoreynon]

As a Boomer I have huge amounts of journals, books, Xeroxes and notes. I don’t mark books and never did, I use post it notes and those yellow ‘flag’ things now. I also put things in a notebook/planner. I use Bookends now but have no notes in it at all: all of them are moved into DEVONthink 3 which has a very good link thing, so I can search the titles. I do duplicate the PDFs there into DEVONthink 3. I don’t copy older things and have found no need. I do, for sure, have journals on my shelves containing papers which I actually access electronically and put in DEVONthink 3. I can’t get rid of them of course.

If I need I take a photo of a notebook page/diagram on a whiteboard etc and save it it to DEVONthink 3. If you want to get really into the weeds of my totally idiosyncratic ways, I take screenshots of those photos or extracts with ‘save section of screen to file’. Screenshots go straight into DEVONthink 3 and get smart ruled in various ways. If I name the file sensibly I can always find what I need. My stuff isn’t though dependent on reams of hard data.

What I don’t remember is if you can OCR in some way what is wrtitten in those photos? Bet you can but I never need to. I rely A LOT on the ‘picture view’? and thumbnails, I scroll down and pick out what I am looking for by eye really quite often.
I wouldn’t, as such, try to convert my paper/book collection into digital.

[tudoreynon]

I have to add one thing that I forgot. I always tell people now not to try to force a system too hard onto DEVONthink 3; not exactly just ‘throw everything in maybe’ but give it time and RELY on DEVONthink 3 to find things for you and start using its features to find things and experiment with views and so on. Really don’t try to jam your books and paper into it though.