Workflow question

[martinjp]

I am in the middle of a project that involves a large number of references, and I'm looking for a better kind of organization. So far, I've been taking notes in Scrivener, and writing the text in Scrivener too. Problem is that means the notes are organized (relatively) linearly, and contained within a particular project file. I recently downloaded a trial of DEVONthink. This has the ability to import references from BookEnds, but it appears not to import keywords data, which seems very odd to me. I tried indexing around 9,000 pdfs, but DEVONthink was able to generate only 16 tags, and it tagged less than 100 of the files! So much for machine intelligence.

I've also created notes within BookEnds. I like the ability to copy text from a pdf into the note stream, especially to create citations. However, I find that these notes disappear into the database and I lose track of them. Most of the 11,000 references were imported from another bibliography program, and so they have a note documenting this import. That means it makes no sense for me to search for only those references that have notes.

In addition, I've been using Scapple to create my own visual summaries of important areas of the literature. This works pretty well, but I would like to add some kind of automation. At the moment I'm simply searching for references on keyword, to try to see what I've forgotten about.

I guess my fantasy is to generate some kind of semantic network based on the keywords I've assigned in BookEnds. How do other BooksEnds users handle this kind of problem?

[Jon]

Note that Bookends isn't mind-mapping software and won't create automatic networks for you. It does have some very useful functions related to this (automatic tag clouds and the ability to cross link references come to mind). And you can search notecards (use the Live Search, select notecards from the popup menu). And you can tag notecards (e.g. %important). That may be of some help.

Jon
Sonny Software

[martinjp]

Good points, Jon! I'd forgotten about linking. I'm now exploring the tag clouds, and indeed they are a tool for bringing to light references that I had lost sight of. I've also realized I can drag and drop into Scapple, which is the kind of free-form mind-mapping I prefer.

A question: Is there a way of adding a Keyword to a number of references at the same time? If not, I suppose what I should do is create a group for these references.

Martin

[Jon]

Yes, you can do a Global Change -> Change Field on the selected refs, the hits, or the entire database.

Jon
Sonny Software

[martinjp]

Oh dear! I just 'Put' 'niche' 'into' the field Keywords for selected references, and it replaced all the existing keywords! Perhaps 'Put' is not quite the right word here? Or perhaps it is 'into' that is misleading?

Martin

[Jon]

You'd use before or after to add, use into to replace. The warning dialog that comes up when you use this option explains exactly what will happen and gives you the opportunity to Cancel.

If you've been using Bookends for more than a day, you should have a backup in ~/Documents/Bookends/Backup

Jon
Sonny Software

[martinjp]

Yes, I'm too busy to read warning messages! : (

Perhaps 'replace' instead of 'into' in the new version?

Martin

[Jon]

OK.

into (replace)

Jon
Sonny Software

[DeclanOB]

I wonder if anybody can describe how they use the Link References feature.
Perhaps there is a video tutorial or blog post somewhere on this (I suspect not).
I'm not so much interested in the technicalities of how to do this, since this is found in the documentation. More interested in how people use this feature.

Thanks,

Declan

[Jon]

I hope others answer this question (I'm curious, too). I'm just butting in to point out that in the upcoming release, linked references will be listed in the Concise View on the right (with hot links).

Jon
Sonny Software

[martinjp]

Jon, I'm exploring the ways of getting notes *out* of Bookends. I can drag them into Scrivener, or Scapple, or ... What are my other options?

[Jon]

Drag and drop will give you the temp citation. There are lots of right-click options for the selected notecards.

Jon
Sonny Software