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Getting organized: digital libraries and workflow?

In our most recent "how can we help you?" thread, a reader asks:

I'm trying to get more organized, and I wonder if anyone would care to share their thoughts on managing digital libraries and workflow.

(1) A few years after my dissertation has been completed , I am left with a lot of articles from my classes and various research, along (legally!) downloaded pdf ebooks. Does anyone have any tips on organizing a unified digital reference library? I haven't really used Endnote, Mendeley, etc, but they seem to be geared at specific paper projects, rather than cataloguing one's entire reference library (or am I wrong?), and I'm also hesitant at some of those yearly price tags. Right now I find myself just using good old fashioned folders, labeled by author or category, but I imagine this is going to get complicated as time goes on.

(2) I love using Scrivener for writing, but there are so many other stages of project planning that I haven't quite figured out how to integrate with digital platforms (to-do lists, time management, project bibliographies, and note taking, larger brainstorming, etc). I'd love to hear about how people manage their digital workflow and what apps or tools they find most useful in doing so.

I have no experience with any of this, so unfortunately I can't offer any tips.

Do any readers who do have any tips to share?

Posted in

9 responses to “Getting organized: digital libraries and workflow?”

  1. Kyle

    I use Zotero to manage my whole reference library. Free, open-source, has tons of integration with other programs, also handles project bibliographies well. I also use Scrivener for writing.
    For note-taking and PDF management (which I take to be distinct from bibliography/reference management), I use Hypernomicon. It’s a database program designed by Jason Winning specifically for philosophers. I don’t use many of the argument-mapping functions, but it’s an excellent file and note manager if you’re fine with the utilitarian UI (which is exactly what I wanted).
    Jason has some excellent tutorials on Hypernomicon on YouTube, which include how to link it to Zotero.

    Reply
  2. Jared

    For to-do lists, I strongly recommend OmniFocus. I’ve been using it for about a year now, and it has been a wonderful addition to my teaching, research, and personal workflows. The only downside is that it is developed for Mac/iOS and the web version (for PC use) is only okay.
    I’m planning on spending some time over the winter break looking into Obsidian and Notion for more general project planning and documentation. These are the two most heavyweight apps used by non-academics for project management that I’m aware of.

    Reply
  3. Daniel Weltman

    Like Kyle I use Zotero, Scrivener, and Hypernomicon. A bit more detail here: https://danielweltman.com/process.html

    Reply
  4. Assistant prof

    I made two mistakes that I regret. First, I use one program (BibTeX) as a reference manager and another (Mendeley) to file and organize the actual readings. Second, I organized readings using a program (Mendeley) that sold me out: they’ve intentionally destroyed their desktop app to force you on the cloud.
    If I could start over, I’d pick a Mendeley alternative that might cost a bit of money, but could do both tasks at once and wouldn’t do mean things to its users.

    Reply
  5. Malcolm

    I’d be interested to hear from historians and those who work with primary texts and engage in translation. Version control is important for the latter, for instance. And hypernomicon looks great, but it seems problem, not text, centered. I’ve played around with Obsidian as a way to map intertextuality and generate hyperlinked keywords and a translation glossary.

    Reply
  6. Jacob Joseph Andrews

    I use Obsidian for notes and writing in a sort of fused PARA / Zettelkasten system. I link it to Zotero using the Citations plugin for managing bibliography + pdfs. It can get chaotic but works great for me. Obsidian lets me quickly tag/link resources to projects, topics, etc., without taking the time to actually curate a bibliography.
    Another system that’s really helped me is to give each of my projects (paper, presentation, etc.) a three letter tag. Eg my latest publication was on William of Auxerre’s social epistemology of religion, so I called it “WSR.” Now, within Obsidian, if I do a global search for “WSR”, I can find any note or article or saved email or whatever that I found useful for that project, even if I forgot to actually link it to the project page (or was eg on my phone and couldn’t).

    Reply
  7. logician

    @ Assistant prof: have you tried BibDesk? It uses BibTeX as the backend database, but will also file the actual documents for you as well. It’s easy to save multiple PDFs for a given reference, so you could e.g. include excerpts for use as readings as well as complete books, articles etc.
    On checking, I see that BibDesk is Mac-only, but if you’re a Windows or Linux user I’m sure there are other open source equivalents. Portability of the bibliography format (BibTeX, in this case) is one advantage of open tools.

    Reply
  8. A little lost

    Zotero is a bit clunky but it hasn’t let me down over the years; I use it for bibliographies (via better bibtex) and PDF management (keeping the files in dropbox). In particular Zotero makes it really easy to sort things into separate folers (‘collections’) and to add items by DOI or ISBN.
    For a few papers etc I have notes on them in Zotero, but I’m still largely a pen-and-paper person for that.

    Reply
  9. Mansi

    I can relate to this! I use Scrivener too, and for the other stages, I rely on Notion for organizing to-do lists and notes, Trello for project planning, and Zotero for managing bibliographies. Would love to hear what others use!

    Reply

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