PhD

Law PhD — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 14:37:28 +0000

Hi All,

I’ve just started a PhD in the field of Criminal Justice in the UK. I’m currently in the exploratory field so I’m reading a ton of materials and making copius amounts of notes. I seem to be going through notebooks like no tomorrow!

Am I correct in assuming that Notebooks would be useful for the collecting all my ideas, thoughts and notes. Is there a limit on how many tabs you can have?

Also, if I notebooks installed to my iMac and my Macbook, is there any way to sync them so they are identical?

Sorry for the newbie questions.

Cheers,
Ed

florestan commented

florestan — Sun, 03 Jan 2010 17:24:48 +0000

Yes, you can indeed use NoteBook for this purpose. I am doing a PhD myself (musicology), but I use NoteBook more for meeting notes, project management, notes on musical works and the like.

My ideas and writings go straight into Scrivener, as I use this application for drafting my thesis. Reading notes are handled by Sente, as I like to keep my reading notes together with the citations in my reference manager.

Hope this makes any sense. If you’d like to hear more about my workflow, please let me know, and I’ll elaborate!

florestan

florestan commented

florestan — Sun, 03 Jan 2010 17:34:26 +0000

I forgot to add that you can have as many tabs as you’d like. Personally I prefer to keep several separate notebooks rather than one massive notebook, but that’s just my taste.

You can indeed sync notebooks across several computers. I keep my notebooks in my Dropbox (www.dropbox.com – you can get a free account there) along with all my other documents. Just remember not to have the same notebook open on both your machines at the same time, as the file may get corrupted!

sbc commented

sbc — Thu, 01 Jul 2010 12:57:50 +0000

You can have as many tabs you like, but once that becomes unwieldy, as it will quickly, you can use the contents card instead.

jshadow007 commented

jshadow007 — Tue, 12 Apr 2011 15:46:12 +0000

I think NoteBook could be a winner for you. If nothing else, you absolutely must demo the software to make sure it works for you. There’s plenty of great software out there, and you want to use what’s easiest for YOU.

Another vote for Dropbox—it’s pretty painless file-sync so long as you remember a few ground rules:

1. When you quit NoteBook on your MacBook, wait 5-10 seconds before putting it to sleep (assuming you’re connected to the internet!), so that the files inside the NoteBook can fully upload to the cloud.

1a. If you don’t have internet when using NB on your laptop, once you do, make sure it fully syncs.

2. Before you open NoteBook on your iMac, make sure that dropbox isn’t syncing at the moment (you can tell by the menu bar icon).

3. Keep. Regular. Backups. Dropbox can rarely mangle a package file (which is what NB Notebooks are).

ptram commented

ptram — Tue, 12 Apr 2011 17:24:54 +0000

I (a theatre and music scholar) use a mixed approach.

- NoteBook was used for collecting research materials for papers. Indexing made retrieving information very easy.

- I replaced it, as an information collector, with DevonThink Pro Office, whose AI features make it a better tool at finding information in very large archives. The user interface is, however, really not as pleasant as NB.

- Presentations are made in NoteBook, as it allows me to create multimedia presentations not tied to the usual, limited slide sequence. I can have longer pages, links, an easily accessible table of content.

- Drafts are written in Scrivener. I would say that this changed my way of writing. I believe that NB can be used for the same approach to writing, but it depends on how you feel with the different UIs.

- Final versions are touched up (and very often furtherly developed) with Nisus Writer Pro.

I should also cite MindNode Pro, in case you are inclined to use mindmaps. NB has a cute diagramming function, but I think it is still in its early shape. If I don’t have to do complex maps, however, I like to use it to create simple diagrams.

Paolo

shanshuprophecy commented

shanshuprophecy — Fri, 23 Sep 2011 17:13:01 +0000

Are there any current/regular PhD students on the forums? I am trying to integrate CPN with my research/reading/writing workflow & would love to hear how others have (successfully) approached this.

i have done quite a bit of research online & have some good links if anyone would like to engage in some collaboration on the logistics of using CPN?

At the moment I am trial-ing Sente, Scrivener & CPN. As they all do different things very well, I think there is room for all 3 (I also use DevonThink Pro as a ‘catchall’ but I am not sure if I can sustain such a disparity of locations. My intention/current practice is to reference & take notes in Sente – I then have a script that exports all notes into DTPO (where I keep an a-z for authors & each Sente note becomes it’s own entity within a labelled folder for the author/ref – this is scripted so it’s not a big deal to do this).

My intention is to make ‘citable notes’ as per Peg Single’s ‘Demystifying Dissertation Writing’ into CPN where I paste all notes I intend to use into 1 page (author-ref) within an a-z structure which is then linked to themes/theories etc … within the notebook – so it’s a living thing that grows as my outline/structure grows. This will then get copied into Scrivener for writing/detailed outlining. (DTPO remains a ‘catchall’ while Sente stays as a stable reference manager with all PDF’s & full notes.

I am wondering if I am complicating things too much – I am cutting & pasting notes from DTPO into CPN so there isn’t too much to this but I am open to other workflows if anyone is using this all in a more efficient way?

One option I have hoped for is to find a script that allows me to transfer Sente notes into CPN & so cut out the DTPO step – DTPO would then be more of a repository for web clips, video, pictures etc ..

Any/all comments are welcome – I can see that this is a slow thread but perhaps there are a few grad students around who are trying to fine-tune their workflow? I find I am prone to procrastination if I am not happy with the way I am managing my research so it’s actually really important for me to have this all running efficiently :)