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Re: Managing your collection of books and papers
| Re: Managing your collection of books and papers |
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Author: Sarah Cage
Posted: Fri, 15 Jul 2005 13:30:00 -0800
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This really depends on what you're using your database for.
I would advise putting everything on one database, as otherwise you have
problems deciding whether a report is a book or a journal article etc.
We put all books on the database when we get them (to act as a sort of
library catalogue), but only put individual chapters on if they are
cited in a publication (to save on work, as some chapters will never be
cited).
As we use our database for a circulated current awareness list, we have
a lot of citations to references we haven't got, but we do make sure
that any references which we order from outside journals get added to
the database (again for library administration reasons as well as so we
can cite them).
Not sure if this is "best practice" - but it works for our database.
In terms of subject organisation - we group the copies into broad
subject areas, and then enter the name of the file into the RM database
(use the "notes" field for this so it gets scanned for keywords), and
use additional keywords to give more idea of the subject. This means we
can search on the file name to get everything which should be in a
particular file, but can also do a keyword search which will find the
more general review articles etc. If you decide that a group of papers
refer to a particular section of your thesis, you can use global edit to
add a specific keyword to all of them, and then do a keyword search to
group the abstracts and give you a list to start writing. This helps
with papers that come in more than one section - otherwise, if you are
just using physical piles of papers to collect the subject areas, you
will have to do (illegal) multiple copies to get these papers into each
section.
Hope this is useful
Sarah Cage
Senior Scientific Information Specialist NPIS (Birmingham Centre)
Birmingham UK
e-mail: "s.cage"
----- Original Message -----
From: ""Peter.Ma??????????????????????" To:
"RIS-List"
Sent: Saturday, July 09, 2005 12:10 AM
Subject: <RefMan> Managing your collection of books and papers
>
> As a researcher, you have both books and articles.
>
> 1. Do you enter both books and articles into the same database (if you
> keep one big database, as seems to be the norm)?
>
> 2. Do you enter ALL material, you get, into the database. If you buy a
> new book, do you then enter it into your database instantly, or do you
> wait until you maybe use it for your writing? That is, do you aim at
> keeping the database as a mirror of your physical collection, or do
you
> use it more pragmatically, according to your needs in writing?
>
> 3. When a book is added to your collection, then do you always enter
it
> in the database?
>
> 4. What do you do with edited books? Do you enter all the chapters in
> such a book, or only a reference to the full book? And then, when you
> need a chapter from an edited book, then do you enter it as a separate
> record, which means that you database will be quite fragmentet,
> including only references to the chapters, you've used in your own
> writing?
>
> On one hand, it would be nice to have a fully updated database,
> reflecting everything you have. On the other hand you don't want to
use
> your precious research-time entering records in the database that you
> might never use.
>
> It would be nice if somewhere you could just enter the ISDN-number of
a
> book, you got, and then download the information (several records with
> all the chapters, if it was an edited book) and import it into RM.
But
> maybe something like this would be possible using Z39.50 sites, but
then
> which hosts should you choose? I tried to choose Danish Royal Library,
> but it didn't return any posts on searches which should return
records.
>
> Best regards,
> Peter.
>
>
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