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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: Matthew Langholtz
Posted: Fri, 15 Jul 2005 13:20:00 -0800
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Peter,
The short answer from my perspective: One big pile in RefMan. The Key:
keywords. You can make your own keywords to sort references any
multiple ways you want, simultaneously, in the same RefMan Data Base. I
have a list of my special keywords that mean unique things to me. I use
a user defined field to note if I have it in *.pdf, its name, otherwise
I use the Reprint field to note if I have a hard copy.
Regards,
Matt
--- ris-list-digest "listmaster"
wrote:
>
> ris-list-digest Saturday, July 9 2005
> Volume 01 : Number 1305
>
>
>
> In this issue:
>
> <RefMan> Best practices for using RM for
> research
> <RefMan> Managing your collection of books and
> papers
> <RefMan> changing font in output style
> <RefMan> author/date sort problem
>
>
----------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Date: Fri, 08 Jul 2005 15:10:00 -0800
> From: Peter.Malling "pma"
> Subject: <RefMan> Best practices for using RM for
> research
>
> Hi.
> I would like to share with you some general
> experiences/concerns on
> managing references using RM, and hopefully we can
> exchange ideas and
> tips.
>
> I'm writing my PhD thesis in the social sciences,
> and I've used RM for
> about a year to input the references. Initially, I
> had an vague idea
> abuot the topics of the thesis, and categorised my
> references into about
> 15 categories in order to be able to find the
> references linking to a
> specific subject when writing the literature review
> etc. I called one of
> the custom fields CAT and made it contain one or
> more (max 3) 3-letter
> mnenonics, such as PER for personality and NET for
> networks. Then the
> idea was that I could just make a search for the
> subject, and get all
> the references relating to that subject, when I was
> about to write about
> it (typically a certain section in the literature
> review).
>
> However, as I could have anticipated, the structure
> of the thesis
> changed when I got into the stuff, and even though
> the categories are
> still relevant, they don't relate directly to each
> section to be
> written. Many of the sections (and many of the
> articles) are
> combinations of the categories, and some of the
> categories will not be
> written about explicitly.
>
> I have all the papers filed in a filing cabinet,
> alphabetically after
> author, and my idea was to use the categories in RM
> to guide my writing.
> (The idea was something like: OK, now I'm going to
> write about
> personality, so I make a search for PER in RM, RM
> gives me a list of the
> papers to include in that section, I find the
> physical papers, and I
> write about them). Even though I can combine the
> categories in my
> search, I don't get the articles relevant to the
> present structure of my
> thesis. And I don't have a great view of my articles
> either.
>
> So I've started to physically sort the papers in
> piles according to the
> present structure of the thesis. This is much
> better, as it gives me a
> much better view of the papers and how they relate
> to each other. Then I
> write the references (or copy them from RM) into my
> outliner (TreePad,
> recommendable!), under the appropriate sections. Now
> my own thoughts and
> ideas come into play with the references, which is
> great.
>
> But that means that I don't use RM very
> innovatively, so to speak. It's
> mainly a record of all my references. I'm not really
> sure how I should
> use RM. Should I put each and every reference I
> have, into a single
> file, and then just pick the references for the
> thesis out of this? This
> means that RM won't give me any help in terms of
> providing an overview
> of my references, it is just a huge "pile" of
> references, where I dig
> the relevant ones out, when I need them, but use
> other software for
> actually managing the references according to their
> contents, which I
> would consider the knowledge management aspect of
> writing up research.
>
> Or should I keep the references relating to my
> thesis copied into a
> separate RM-file? Then I would have one main file
> with ALL references, I
> have, and the references relating to the thesis
> copied into another
> file. But this gives me a problem of redundancy
> between the databases,
> with all the problems that this gives. And there is
> a life after the
> thesis - I heard - and then should I have a separate
> RM-file for each
> paper etc. and each research projects I might become
> involved in?
>
> I would be very interested in hearing what you guys
> do? Do you have only
> one single RM-file, with everything in, and how do
> you actually manage
> your references, in relation with you writing? Do
> you use RM to
> categorise references?
>
> Regards from a nice, sunny summer-Denmark
> Peter.
>
>
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> ------------------------------
>
> Date: Fri, 08 Jul 2005 15:10:00 -0800
> From: Peter.Malling "pma"
> 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
=== message truncated ===
Matt Langholtz
Ph.D. Candidate
School of Forest Resources and Conservation, UF
P.O. Box 110831
Gainesville, FL 32611-0410
e-mail: "mateo" "mateopucu"
Pager and Cell: (352)246-7091
Office Fax: (352)846-0892; E-Fax: (208) 485-8172
Home page: http://plaza.ufl.edu/mateo/
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