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I mostly write fiction, along with the occasional book review or essay, but I'm currently doing some preliminary research for something that might turn into a nonfiction book or possibly a scholarly paper, or maybe both. Anyway, I'm collecting my source material. I went to Staples to buy index cards in preparation for starting my research and it occurred to me that index cards were awfully low-tech for a geeky tech-chick such as myself.
I was thinking that I could use an Access database to keep track of notes--I could easily relate them to the bibliographic information that way, and then I could design some kind of front end to do a search of everything I've collected.
The main reason I have not to do that is that I hope to buy a Mac in the next year or so and I didn't plan to buy MS Office for it. I'm sure that Macs have some kind of database application, however.
A big reason pro computer storage is that when all is complete, I can burn it all to a CD instead of storing a big old box of index cards. I try to avoid clutter whenever possible.
A reason con is that I fear that not having everything right at my fingertips, as I would with the index-card system, would cause some data to possibly get lost.
How do you experienced non-fiction writers keep track of your data?
I was thinking that I could use an Access database to keep track of notes--I could easily relate them to the bibliographic information that way, and then I could design some kind of front end to do a search of everything I've collected.
The main reason I have not to do that is that I hope to buy a Mac in the next year or so and I didn't plan to buy MS Office for it. I'm sure that Macs have some kind of database application, however.
A big reason pro computer storage is that when all is complete, I can burn it all to a CD instead of storing a big old box of index cards. I try to avoid clutter whenever possible.
A reason con is that I fear that not having everything right at my fingertips, as I would with the index-card system, would cause some data to possibly get lost.
How do you experienced non-fiction writers keep track of your data?