I’ve been at a crossroads for quite some time regarding how exactly to populate my database. To me, DTPO is so powerful that it is, I believe, critical to give serious thought to database organisation.
I generally do not use DTPO as a writing environment. I use start some writing projects in DTPO, but lately I’ve used it for notes, usually in plain text. I generally reserve actual writing for Bean and/or LaTeX (well, TexShop).
At the moment, I use DTPO as a partial repository. I say partial because not everything goes in. I use the indexing feature quite a bit (for searches), but I’ll come to that in a bit.
For the most part, I use DTPO primarily to hold news items gleaned from the web. Actually, most of the news items come from NetNewsWire. It’s a quick and easy way to get those items into DTPO, and I find that I collect far more than I actually read (the curse of being an academic perhaps?). In one sense, however, this has come in handy, particularly when I search for something much later and come across a news item I didn’t know I had. (I usually quietly thank Eric and the team when this happens!) In my field (which changes almost weekly, it seems), I’ve found that keeping a record of ‘what’s going on’ can be critical.
I also use DTPO as a bit of staging point for writing projects. I have a top-level folder called “In Development” that holds sub-folders named after the various writing and research projects I’m involved with. In this regard, DTPO it is functioning more or less as a finder replacement as the folders and sub-folders (organised by project) hold pdfs, replicants of other items in the database, data files, and other miscellany. The most useful bit about doing this for me is replicated other files from the database into a specific writing project folder. If I come across something in my database and realise that it is directly related to a particular writing project, I can quickly replicate to that project’s folder. I know you more or less duplicate this using an alias in Finder, but using DTPO feels a bit more robust.
Another part of my database that I use often is a top-level folder for holding information about books/references that, at some point, I need to get. It’s a good way, I find, of just quickly adding references or new book announcements and then visiting maybe one a week or two to action. I also use it as record to track interlibrary loan requests and any book orders that I send through to our library (we’re lucky in that our library, even in this economic climate, still has a bit of money to spend so they love it when they get requests).
So what is not included in this database? Well, all of my journal articles, for one, but also the thousands of other pdfs (reports, presentations, books, etc.) and other file types relating to my research. Were talking GBs and GBs, and I suspect most people on these forums are the same. I don’t store them in DTPO simply because the size of the database would be HUGE. Yes, I could allocate to a separate database, but instead I tell DTPO to index my “Research” folder (which lives on my hard drive) every week or so. In essence, while all of these files do not necessarily live in DTPO, the application is nevertheless aware of the content because it has indexed it. I love this. I can find anything instantly and, as I say, it does not have to actually reside within the database. As an added advantage, having the ability to navigate all this stuff via the Finder (or Path Finder, which I use) is quite nice.
Kabo: you wondered about how to file stuff. I wrestled with this as well. In the end, I decided to file my journal articles (for example) based on the journal title as opposed to any subject or tag. Because they are indexed, I can use DTPO to show me which journal articles were recently indexed (say, in the last month, which I do) and this helps remind me that, oh yeah, I wanted to read that. I went with this method because, like you, I wasn’t sure what to do when a single article crossed many fields (as they often do).
Anyway, let me address the number of databases I use. I actually have only three. My “MAIN” database holds exactly what I described above. I like to keep it all together as it seems to be easier (for me, anyway) rather than opening and closing multiple databases. Perhaps I’ve not explored fully cross-database workflows. I also have a ‘teaching’ database that holds files and stuff relating to teaching. It doesn’t get used a huge amount, to be honest, as I generally just use finder to hold all my teaching-related files. Finally, I have a ‘personal’ database that holds news items and misc files on a variety of subjects, mostly tech- or Mac-related. My most personal stuff (budget, scans of passports, etc.) is contained within an encrypted disk image.
That was off the cuff so maybe a bit disjointed. Apologies, if so.
Cheers!
David
And I have to learn to do shorter posts!