Keeping all the knowledge organized

[keithsct]

Hi Alll, There's lots of different studies that are presented and discussed on these and other forums. I find that often I remember a bit of knowledge gleaned from a study, but can't find the exact study or article that I was reading. What methods do you use to organize what you've learned in your health oriented research? I sometimes search for my old posts to find things that I've talked about, but I don't always post about everything and sometimes if you just give links, the links die after the original site dies or is reorganized.

 

Thanks for any replies,

Keith

[BrianMDelaney]

Hi Keith!

 

I see no one has replied to this.

 

My method: use Word documents, and copy the link, if the information came from the Web, along with the relevant text (in case the link goes dead).

 

In other words: everything on my computer, in Word documents, aside from PDF or other types of files I get sent, which are in a "Health" subdirectory, also on my computer (and are linked to from the Word file dealing with that topic).

 

Best,

Brian

[keithsct]

Hi Keith!

 

I see no one has replied to this.

 

My method: use Word documents, and copy the link, if the information came from the Web, along with the relevant text (in case the link goes dead).

 

In other words: everything on my computer, in Word documents, aside from PDF or other types of files I get sent, which are in a "Health" subdirectory, also on my computer (and are linked to from the Word file dealing with that topic).

 

Best,

Brian

Thanks, Brian. All of that makes sense. I suppose one could also "print to PDF" for the web sites that represent discussion threads or critiques of research papers. Then link to those files in a word document. Another thing that I thought might be useful is to associate each article with a keyword list in the word document. Then I could search for the keyword and obtain all the documents on a particular subject at the same time.

 

I wonder if it's possible to set up a web site with all these documents and allow google to search and index on the local web site? Google should already know how to use all the same keywords, and how to search thru word documents and pdf files to present a results list.

 

 

Cheers,

Keith

[James Cain]

I've used Mendeley reference management software to organize academic papers and books for years. If you do any serious academic writing or just want to keep track of papers then some kind of software like this is almost a must. It also makes inserting references into writing very easy. Some benefits to Mendeley over other similar software is that its free (some others are) and it offers full-text searching (I haven't seen this with others). These types of reference services are also great for finding similar papers based on what other users have in their collections.

 

Most of these programs (including Mendeley) store your papers and metadata online and sync across all your devices, so no worries about losing your data!

 

http://www.mendeley.com/

 

A long while back I created a public "Calorie Restriction" group with some CR papers I found particularly good or interesting. I haven't kept up with it but maybe it's time I revisit it.

 

http://www.mendeley.com/groups/3802261/calorie-restriction/

[James Cain]

I've also found Microsoft OneNote to be of great value for keeping track of stuff I've found on websites, images, and some files. It's sort of an electronic notebook system. The web browser, tablet, and phone versions of the software are free, and you can pay extra if you want the software to install on your computer. Evernote is a similar web application, though there are some differences between the two products which might benefit you depending on your needs.

 

http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/onenote/

but probably easier to use this link... https://login.live.com/

 

http://evernote.com/