Advice sought in scoping a personal deployment of Bookends.

[Myles]

I'm just adopting Bookends and I am planning/setting up how I shall be using it, and I hope to turn to more experienced hands for advice.

Given the context of an individual knowledge worker engaged in reading, writing, researching, developing materials for work, and concerned with managing sources, output, and resources each of these could be individual tools, or possibly could fall within the legitimate scope of a deployment of Bookends. The last is the obvious case in scope, but what about the others.

Reference Catalogue: Provides an overview of all resources in the personal collection.
Resource Library: Organizes and stores various digital assets for easy access and use.
Library Index: Helps locate specific information within individual documents.
Reference Manager: Manages bibliographic references and supports citation needs in writing and research.

What should I include in scope?
What should I definately exclude?

Many thanks

[Jon]

Others who use Bookends in different scenarios may give you advice, but I'll throw in a few considerations. Bookends can fulfill all of the functions you list AFAICT, but you might find that using it in combination with another app works even better. For example: Reference Catalogue. I'm not sure exactly what that means to you, but it sounds like maybe an app like DEVONthink 3 would suit you. They have a template for importing references from Bookends, and we and the DT3 team have worked together to try to make data exchange smooth.

Bookends has many other capabilities that might be of interest to a "knowledge worker" (use of Spotlight and Finder file tags to locate useful attachments, extensive use of reference links, hypertext links, and PDF deep links, extraction of detailed PDF annotations and notes, citation discovery (locating references cited in or cited by references you have), etc.). Most of these have associated video tutorials, and all are covered in detail in the User Guide.

Jon
Sonny Software

[Myles]

Thanks - that's been my instinct as well, and first choice was the same tool - I was a long-term use of DT, and still have a licence for the current version - but it doesn't seem to like files being on cloud drives (in the way that you allow attachments to be).

I may well look at DAM (as in digital asset management) tools for its replacement.

[DrJJWMac]

I tend to view Bookends as a Resource Library for PDFs and their meta content as well as a Reference Manager in the manner that you quote. Since my libraries are not including anything other than PDFs, I have no need for a Reference Catalogue app. I agree that DevonThink might fulfill this role. However, you may find that Bookends could serve to catalogue when you would master smart folders, smart groups, and the corresponding search criteria, especially with the SQL approaches. Finally, with regard to Library Index, the options in Bookends to search through electronic documents should be well suited to your needs.

To address your two specific questions, we would need to know your specific aims. For example, is this for writing a book, preparing a research proposal, or completing a journal article. Bookends is just the tool to get you to the end point.

[Myles]

Thank you @DrJJWMac - I am busy adopting BE in the context you have outlined, and I am increasingly convinced of the approach.

My remaining scenario concerns how I organise the resources I use in teaching - stuff I might produce or collect for use and re-use/re-purposing in my teaching practice

I don't keep my zettelkasten in BE, for instance - should I see my resources in the same way and use something else

I do track usage - much like citing a source, so I might well end up importing references into BE anyway (although I can probably just use Hookmark for this)

[DrJJWMac]

> My remaining scenario concerns how I organise the resources I use in teaching - stuff I might produce or collect for use and re-use/re-purposing in my teaching practice

I might provide insights on this question from my experience.

* For each course that I teach, I have a master (root) folder at the Finder level in a sub-folder ~/Documents/Teach. By example, ~/Documents/Teach/MTS 601.

* Within the course folder, I have a folder called "xxxtopics". Within this folder, I store the "chapter" lecture content. So, starting from MTS 601/mts601topics, you would find these folders: 00 Course Administration, 01 Course Prologue, 02 Materials Overview, 03 Chemistry Prologue, 04 Composition ... The content within each of the "chapter" folders is self-contained over the given course, regardless of when I offer the course.

* Within the course folder, I also have a folder for the current course. So, starting again form MTS 601, you would find MTS 601/mts601f24 (for this fall semester). The content within this "semester" folder is self-contained only for the given semester when the course is being offered. It contains sub-folders for administration, homework, exams, projects, course outline, ...

Continuing on the theme of organizing teaching resources *to produce something*, I have initiated a project to write a textbook for the MTS 601 course. For this, I used DevonThink (DT) to IMPORT the MTS 601/mts601topics folder, and I INDEX the semester-by-semester folders when I feel the need. Finally, I have a folder ~/Documents/Anthologies/tomes/Textbook MTS 601 where I am developing the textbook. I also INDEX this folder in DT.

So, in general, I do not use Bookends to organize teaching content. I prefer DT. I do however use Bookends to collect general teaching resources. For this, I have a Bookends Library called Teaching.

ps ... The other app that is essential both to create as well as to organize my teaching content is Curio. Visit the Zengobi website and search for "teaching" to see variations in discussions on this.