I’ve started using DEVONthink to manage a couple of simple lists.
Books to read. When I finish a book, I want a list that I can scan to decide what to read next. I’ve started using Markdown documents for this purpose. I created a group called “Books” in my primary database. The name of the document is the title, followed by the author. I tag the document with the authorname — last name first — followed by the genre “fiction” or “nonfiction.” Often I leave the note empty, sometimes I put in a note why I thought the book would be good to read (a friend recommended it, I heard it on a podcast, whatever).
Setting up meetings. I’m attending a major conference in two weeks — Mobile World Congress in Barcelona — and I’m using DEVONthink to manage a list of contacts to set up meetings. The name of the company goes in the name of the document, along with a few words to note the status (“emailed Wednesday” or whatever). Again, often the document is empty but sometimes there’s a line or two of further notes in the document. In this case, I group the documents together by groups rather than tags, one group for important companies, another for telcos, another for “done,” for companies where I have either successfully scheduled a meeting or they declined.
I’m passing this on in case others find it useful, or can suggest improvements to my method.
In the case of my books list, I am intentionally keeping it minimalist. The sole purpose of this list is to make notes of books I might like to read, so that information can be available to me when I’m deciding what to read next. I like to read 2-3 books at a time, one of them nonfiction.
I started with a sheet, but I could not find a way that I could filter a sheet. Is there a way to do that? To only see lines in a sheet with the status of fiction or non-fiction?
As a secondary issue, if I recall sheets are not extremely readable on the iPhone, and sometimes I’m looking on the iPhone to see what to read next.
Like you, I create a record for each book; tagged as required
Media I’d like to read, books purchased, completed readings, notes, …
One of my tags is Project: Media to Read, along with Status
It’s easy to use smart groups for simple filtered note lists
For more specific list requirements, I use applescripts
. Sorting as required; multiple levels
. Groups with headings, sub headings
My active project lists are refreshed automatically,
with the scripts creating Formatted Note (html) files
As much as I am an avid fan of Devonthink, can I suggest that this seems to me like using a hammer because that’s nearby and the screwdriver is upstairs?
It seems to me you could likely achieve this much more effectively with Google Sheets.
Google Sheets are free.
Moreover if you make the Google Sheet sharable then you can add it to Devonthink via Bookmark. Then you can both view it and edit it within Devonthink.
It’s like adding all the features of Google Sheets to Devonthink - for free.
I use Numbers, in part because I already have many similar lists (books, but also music, movies, etc), and eons ago I started using Excel for that. After I converted a few to Numbers, I liked it a lot, and nowadays I do it, but also markdown “masters” with DT links to other markdown or rtf, or whatever, files and groups.
I’m more a fan of Apple Numbers; with the spreadsheet file store’d in Devonthink
I don’t see the benefit of using Google, unless you plan to share the document
I kind of understand this approach as it reminds me of Tinderbox and its use of metadata. I wonder wether you could even combine this approach and use a watched group in TBX if you want to create tables for the notes.
Alternatively, consider using a database. I bought Tap Forms during their sales couple of years back and it replaced some of my spreadsheets. I built a simple relationship manager to keep track of events, meetings, participants, and notes for both professional and personal life. I used to use wikilinks in DT for this but I find a relational database to be more wieldy. Did the same thing for my music and book collections.
For books specifically, there are also dedicated book tracker applications. I like this one, mostly because it doesn’t scrape personal information. https://booktrack.app
It is a it hammer to crack a nut, but I use Bookends to track my reading. You can search and download all the info for a book and then add notes. It has the added attraction of being able to ‘cite’ your notes if the mood takes you.
(Bookends is available on MacOS and IOS. There is a learning curve…)
I also like making a “list” by creating a set of flat files with structured filenames to encode metadata (like OP does). I index a folder like this for my todo list. I like that I can use bash utilities to filter/manipulate the files or their contents (Markdown files) easily.
I’m sure this has been requested before but what I’m really missing is the ability to set an arbitrary order to the files in this list, and have that synced across devices. I’d love to be able to drag-and-drop on my iPhone with DEVONthink To Go, and have that show up in DEVONthink on macOS.
I had same thoughts and ultimately also went with a tracker app. Here is what I use, is free and open source and got some recent updates to include export to csv so I can always ge tiny excel sheet or list back if I want!
This thread has certainly generated a lot of traffic, and that is good to see. I like the idea of tracking and cataloging all of my books–read or not. I am thinking that wouldn’t it be nice to have a photo of the front cover each book that you are listing. I very much identify with the cover of the books in my library.
