medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
From: Diana Wright <[log in to unmask]>
> This question is for the rest of you who are NOT librarians. How do you
organize your files -- notes, offprints, photocopies, notebooks, etc.
"[handwritten] notes, offprints, photocopies, notebooks"
how Quaint.
> -- & still keep things handy while you are writing? I think I have
reached some kind of tipping point.
well, some of us are too Kind to have mentioned it...
> My ideal space would have a couple of very long, parallel tables for
stacking & spreading, but I am pretty well limited to a small desk in a
small bedroom for the files and papers, although books are allowed all
over the house. [It was quite a struggle, though, to get them out of the
bathroom closet, but after a good pout they settled onto the staircase.] The
issue here is all the non-book stuff.
i seem to be heading in a "non-book stuff" direction, even when i use books to
extract the information.
lately i've been doing a *lot* of OCRing, from books, periodicals, off The
Innernets (esp. JSTOR), ending up with WORD files which i can put on my USB
drives to haul home from the lieberry, put on my HD at home, eventually on
CDs.
also, downloading a lot of older stuff as .pdfs from Gallica, books.google,
wherever, putting those together, topically arranged, onto CDs --i've got
quite a library of CDs now, including long runs of basic [French] periodicals,
etc.
shucks, i can't remember when i last wrote a "note" --sometime away back in
the last millennium, it seems like.
Abby FineReader is the best OCR program i've found and, with a fast machine
(which i have at taxpayers' expense), works pretty... well, fast.
with *really* clean images of really standard fonts (i.e., from JSTOR),
pasting directly into WORD works pretty well.
even the crappy, low (or no) rez images of 19th c. stuff off of Gallica can be
downloaded in .tff format and run through FineReader with a more or less
legible result --i only do a real Clean Up if i'm going to use it in something
i'm writing.
it's just *so* much easier when quoting extensive sections of text --or doing
rough drafts using long bits which will eventually be cut out of the final
version-- to have all that text in digital form rather than keystroaking from
a Hard Copy.
and, it's convenient to get to, as well.
not as though i've got to find it stacked on some table or in a bathroom
closet...
c
**********************************************************************
To join the list, send the message: join medieval-religion YOUR NAME
to: [log in to unmask]
To send a message to the list, address it to:
[log in to unmask]
To leave the list, send the message: leave medieval-religion
to: [log in to unmask]
In order to report problems or to contact the list's owners, write to:
[log in to unmask]
For further information, visit our web site:
http://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/lists/medieval-religion.html
|