On Notes

[aechallu]

Now that notes are receiving a more prominent place in Bookends (BE) through a special tab and with a special section in the concise view, I would like to see what Jon and the forum thinks about a proposal that could improve the use and functionality of notes.

Currently, notes go in a single text field (Notes or Abstract) in the reference record. My proposal, instead, is to have multiple instances of notes that depend on a bibliographic reference (multiple notes nested to the bibliographic record). The note object would have three fields: the reference ID that ties it to its reference parent (invisible to the user since notes are only available by looking at references), a memo field, and the page/page range to which it applies.

The user can see and edit notes in two ways:
a) In the Concise view (under the List window), the Notes pane would have each note as a row or as little blurbs shorter than (say) 5 lines. Upon double clicking the user can edit the note in place.
b) In the Reference window, under the Notes tab, each note would resemble Scrivener's index cards in the corkboard view.

The interesting thing is that the user can drag (or more likely command-Y) a note to Mellel or the word processor of choice and that would paste the reference with the proper page number or page range. Perhaps using a modifier on the action the content of the note can be pasted as well.

The other advantage is that Bookends could keep its notes with Skim. Skim occupies everyday more and more a central part in my workflow, it's a great tool to annotate PDFs and highlight fragments I'm interested in quoting or look up. It would be good if this functionality could be tied to Bookends. (Current functionality in Bibdesk may show a way to proceed).

I realize this would imply rethinking the data model underlying BE, but I think it reflects very well the research and documentation process of academic users. If modifying the data model is impractical, a similar functionality can be reproduced by importing skim notes to BE's notes field and being able to copy citations to a wordprocessor with a given page range (say sh-command-Y would use the selection as the page range? ctrl-command-Y would paste the whole selection as text and a bibliographic citation afterward?).

In any way, I wanted to circulate the idea to see what others think about good ways of keeping notes with bookends and using them efficiently in their workflow.

[chadders]

This functionality is something that I would certainly find useful. I often find myself storing a summary of a written work in the notes section, and to relate notes to specific sections in a document, would be superb for me.

I recommend this functionality to Jon and the team.

[jkr]

I second that. Just wanted to add such a post to the forum. It really would make the notes easier to facilitate. The ultimate solution for me would be the ability to export these notes, say, in RTF with the title of the file being the title of the note entry, the note itself (preferably with all the functionality of notes that Bookends has right now, and a link to Bookends that includes the page range at the end of the document, like {author, year@p-p}. I also work with Scrivener and that would be ultimate solution for me, as I could prepare my notes in BE, export them to Scrivener and still have my "original" notes available in BE for other papers as well once I have started to work with them in the Scrivener file.

[terceiro]

This is a very, very good idea.

I've been playing with Zotero a bit, and will continue to use it to scrape sources off web pages (Google Books + Zotero is mighty nice), but then for work, I export the references into Bookends. I am much more comfortable in BE, and it is faster and generally more powerful.

But I'm tempted with Zotero's multiple-note ability. If Zotero had a better way to export with notes, I'd be tempted to use it for a larger part of my workflow. As it stands, I make do (poorly) by doing things by hand.

Adding improved note handling in BE would be a major improvement to my work/life.

[Jon]

Hi,

Thanks to everyone who has posted to this thread. I do believe that enhanced notes support would be a good thing, and your ideas are very helpful.

Jon
Sonny Software

[Gerben]

I think the ability to link multiple notes to a single reference would be very good.

But one thing would be really important: the ability to also search these notes based on their contents and keywords. Example: I am just now writing on Jewish migrants in Paris and anti-semitism. I currently use Slipbox to make notes and assign keywords. If I want to retrieve all my notes that deal with this particular topic I can do so easily and start writing.

I checked the Sente 5 demo to see how they implemented the notes feature but there seems to be no way to retrieve notes in such a way. For me this makes it pretty useless as a tool in the writing process.

Gerben

[Jon]

You mean you want note-specific keywords? Just the ability to search notes (perhaps in multiple streams) isn't enough?

Jon
Sonny Software

[bluloo]

While I'm late to the party, I would like to add support for notes capability within the list view.

[Gerben]

Well, ideally note-specific keywords would be perfect..

The problem is that I often use keywords that do not appear in the text of a note as such. Example: if i have a note or a quote from an article that speaks of the Polish brigade that fought in the Spanish Civil War i will tag it with 'Dombrowksi' (the name of the brigade) and also 'International Brigade', perhaps 'Polish communists' (well, now that i write it down: of course one could simply make sure all these "keywords" are in the note text but there are cases when separating such metatags from the actual note makes sense).

I don't know if you and others know a little freeware app called Slipbox (sorry for shameless plug but it provided a useful example in this discussion I think/hope) but it does exactly this: you enter notes/quotes in a text field, the ref in a separate field and keywords as well. Keywords have an auto-complete option or can be entered by double clicking in the keywrod list; so entering is fast. Searching works very flexible. Right now the app allows you to go to the corresponding ref of a note via a search in BE command; I suggested to the developer to use BE's URL capability so it would be one click from a note to the ref in BE.
See: http://www.markusguhe.net/slipbox/

Sorry for being a bit long bit I would be highly interested to see what Jon and others think of how notes could be implemented.

Best,
Gerben

[jblander]

Well, ideally note-specific keywords would be perfect..

Hi, Gerben. Wouldn't the current BE keywords field be sufficient for this task? Granted, if multiple notes per record are implemented, the keywords wouldn't be note-specific, but you could still easily add keywords that span multiple notes for that record, and the search would at least get you to all the right records so that you can then pick through all the notes.

I'm tired today, so I could very well be missing something, though.

[Jon]

While I'm late to the party, I would like to add support for notes capability within the list view.

You have full access to Bookends notes now (as they are implemented now) with the configurable concise view.

Jon
Sonny Software

[Jon]

At first blush I don't think dedicated note-specific keywords should be implemented as such. One thing I think should be noted is that Bookends is not, and is not intended to be, a bone fide note-taking application. There are plenty of those already, and many are excellent. Bookends is a reference management tool, with online search and import, formatting bibliographies, scanning documents, etc. and I believe it should remain focused on that (I don't think anyone wants Bookends to become Word). Indeed, note taking and retrieval is part of this process and can be improved, and it will be, but in ways that make sense in the context of a reference management app. I appreciate all the great ideas, but I think this touchstone may help keep the discussion realistic and fruitful.

Jon
Sonny Software

[Gerben]

Hi Jon,

Well, you are right, I was getting maybe a bit too enthusiastic and already had visions on BE being also the perfect note taking app

I would have to think more about what I would like to see within the parameters you set; I must also say that good integration with existing apps is just as fine.

@jblander: thanks, but picking through all the notes is exactly what i try to avoid.. it takes too much time to do so when one has dozens of notes (which easily happens with a book).

Best,
Gerben

[terceiro]

Wow. Ten points to Gerben for the pointer to SlipBox. What a cool app. It's not perfect, but it has exactly what I'm looking for:

1. The ability to make nice, granular notes. I want to have one note per quote, summary, commentary. For a single book, this might yield dozens of notes
2. A convenient metadata way to provide source information and keywords
3. A nicely formatted export with plenty of options, so I can get the quotes, summaries, comments, and notes into my word processor or DEVONthik database

The integration with Bookends is useful, kinda. I might be missing something, but the ability to link to BE really just takes the info I've typed in as the source info in SlipBox and tosses it into the search field in BE. From there, I execute the search, copy the citation, and paste it back into SlipBox. Since I'm not composing in SlipBox, I think I might just put my citations in curly-brackets so I can use them upon export to Scrivener or Mellel. Bookends is still critical, but not at the SlipBox stage. Am I missing something? Is there something more I could be doing to integrate BE with my note taking?

The "scents" in SlipBox are an interesting concept, but not anything I need (I think), and until (unless) Jon chooses to add similar functionality to Bookends, I'll be giving SlipBox (later exported to DEVONthink) a try.

[thecritic]

3. A nicely formatted export with plenty of options, so I can get the quotes, summaries, comments, and notes into my word processor or DEVONthik database

Why you wouldn't take notes directly in DEVONThink?