Paper and Files coming out of my ears! Argh!
I'm currently contemplating doing a major re-organisation of all the papers I've collected, files I've generated, simulations I've run, etc etc. They're currently in a great big mess, partially organised into a hundred different systems I've thought were worth trying at one time or another, but then forgot about. As a result, I have no idea where anything is... So, I'm wondering... what is a good system for organising papers etc.? How have you guys (those of you who have to deal with this...) done it? Any suggestions?
I think my main problem is that I start using a system when I need to do some reading; I use it for a week of intensive literature work, and then forget about it... so when I come back to doing more literature stuff, I forget how I've done things in the past, invent a new system, and end up with a big mess! So... as a result, I've read an awful lot of papers, but I haven't really retained much of the information from them.
So... currently, I have two repositories of papers:
- ones I've printed out, which have been stapled, hole-punched and stored in folders in something approaching an organised system.
- ones I only have PDFs for, which are stored in a hierarchy of folders. Those are actually kind of nicely indexed, as I have a great program, JabRef, which allows crosslinking, keyword searching etc. and automatically detects PDF files based on the Latex reference they're assigned.
So... I think what I should do is try to set up JabRef to also index the notes I've made on the papers, and to tell me where I've stored paper copies.
Well... I'll see what happens...
I think my main problem is that I start using a system when I need to do some reading; I use it for a week of intensive literature work, and then forget about it... so when I come back to doing more literature stuff, I forget how I've done things in the past, invent a new system, and end up with a big mess! So... as a result, I've read an awful lot of papers, but I haven't really retained much of the information from them.
So... currently, I have two repositories of papers:
- ones I've printed out, which have been stapled, hole-punched and stored in folders in something approaching an organised system.
- ones I only have PDFs for, which are stored in a hierarchy of folders. Those are actually kind of nicely indexed, as I have a great program, JabRef, which allows crosslinking, keyword searching etc. and automatically detects PDF files based on the Latex reference they're assigned.
So... I think what I should do is try to set up JabRef to also index the notes I've made on the papers, and to tell me where I've stored paper copies.
Well... I'll see what happens...