Looking for suggestions on workflow (re: projects and their references)

[mjvalente]

Hello,

I'm trying to set up a new, more convenient, workflow re: my projects and references used on each project.

Until now I had several static groups, each with several references. However, I cannot easily know which are the references I use the most. Plus, my leftmost pane is getting crowded with all kinds of groups.

I thought about using keywords for this (ex. pj-2018-pub-hto, pj-2019-pos-lve, pj-2019-pre-cbc...), but that would mean mingling purposes (in each reference I have a set of keywords to contextualize the reference: e.g. holocene, biogeography, europe, vegetation).

Since I cannot find best way to do this, maybe someone can share how is doing this. Are you using any of the above methods (static groups or keywords)? Are you using one of the Field Labels? Any other method?

Best,

/mjvalente

[Philologist]

Until now I had several static groups, each with several references.

So, which reference goes into which static group?

I use static groups mainly for projects I'm working on. When I finish a project the references remain in the static group. That enables me to keep track of which references I used for, let's say, project X.

I occasionally discover an author whom I find particularly interesting. Then I import all his/her books and dump them into a static group where they will remain until I have time to go through them one by one, adding keywords, etc. When I've done that, I delete the static group.

my leftmost pane is getting crowded with all kinds of groups

Consider using folders; a folder can reside inside another folder.
I use a folder, for example, for "Countries". Inside that folder is a folder called "Russia." Inside that folder are smart folders called "Putin", "Russian Literature. Primary sources" and another smart folder called "Russian Literature. Secondary sources". Inside the smart folder "Russian Literature. Primary sources" is a smart folder called "Dostoevsky."

I thought about using keywords for this (ex. pj-2018-pub-hto, pj-2019-pos-lve, pj-2019-pre-cbc...)

Then you need to create a smart group to find all instances of pj-2018-pub-hto. I find a static group easier to manage because you can just drag and drop the references you need into that group.

When I enter a new reference I assign it as many meaningful keywords I can think of. Most of my references are books, and I read carefully the table of contents and pick up keywords from there that I would have otherwise missed.

[mjvalente]

Thanks for the feedback, Philologist. I was wondering if there was a better system than the one I already had set up. I think we are working similarly... but your suggestion of nested folders is a great improvement.