At present, Zotero’s “date” field doesn’t properly handle publications made over a range of years (e.g., 1950–1960). Instead of including the full range in the corresponding note or bibliography entry, only the first year of the range would be presented (e.g., 1950).
There is, however, a workaround that depends on entering the following syntax in an item’s “extra” field:
issued: [first year]/[last year]
Thus, for example, if the extra field has
issued: 1950/1960
Zotero would properly output a range of publication dates “1950–1960.” According to the Zotero forums, “better support for various date formats in the Date field itself is planned,” but there hasn’t been any indication of when this might be forthcoming. Until then, this workaround should prove immensely useful for these kinds of situations.
TopTracker provides a straight-forward, free time tracking utility that works on both Windows and OS X. The utility allows commenting on each session tracked (e.g., words written during that session). It also allows export via CSV, from where numbers can be crunched further in Excel to see how well progress is going.
By default, TopTracker will upload screenshots periodically while it’s running, but this feature can be disabled and other elements customized in the program’s settings.
For other similar utilities, see the Zapier blog. For additional discussion of the value of tracking writing progress or other “deep work,” see Paul Silvia’s book How to Write a Lot or Cal Newport’s Deep Work.
Cal Newport outlines the basics of how he reads when working on a project. According to Newport,
The key to my system is the pencil mark in the page corner. This allows me later to quickly leaf through a book and immediately identify the small but crucial subset of pages that contain passages that relate to whatever project I happen to be working on.
For the balance of Newport’s process, see his original post. For broader suggestions about effective and efficient reading, see for example Rick Ostrov’s Power Reading and James Sire’s How to Read Slowly.
Scott Rosenberg has an interesting essay that traces the rise, development and possible future of Google Books and, to a lesser extent, similar efforts like Internet Archive and HathiTrust. Rosenberg’s narrative is largely one of decreasing momentum. He comments,
There are plenty of other explanations for the dampening of Google’s ardor [for Google Books]: The bad taste left from the lawsuits. The rise of shiny and exciting new ventures with more immediate payoffs. And also: the dawning realization that Scanning All The Books, however useful, might not change the world in any fundamental way.
But, interesting possibilities definitely remain on the horizon. While it remains to be seen what of those materialize, Google Books still provides a useful tool in its own niche area.
The Logos Talk blog has addressed integration with Zotero a couple times (1, 2). Another helpful way to connect the two platforms is by using Zotero’s “attach link to URI” feature.
The option can be found via the attachment menu or by right-clicking a particular item in Zotero. The option allows users to specify a name (if desired) and link (i.e., URL) to a given location.
Adding these links in Zotero also has the helpful benefit of indicating which resources in Zotero you have in Logos. I’ve occasionally gone hunting in the library or submitted an inter-library loan request, only to find that—buried amid everything else in a previous Logos base package upgrade or library expansion—I already had the resource there.
Michael Hyatt has a good discussion of digital notekeeping tools, a.k.a. “Evernote alternatives.” As even the nomenclature might suggest, Michael opts for Evernote.
I used Evernote for quite some time too but transitioned several months back to OneNote. I haven’t ever gotten particularly sold on Apple devices, so Apple-only alternatives were out by default.
While I enjoyed Evernote, their limiting their “Free” plan to sync with two devices was the main impetus for me to look for a change. I already had OneNote at the Office and via an Office 365 University subscription at home. Plus, OneNote has both iOS and Android apps, as well as a web version, so it was a logical option.
(N.B.: Windows 10 comes by default with the OneNote app installed in a lighter version. But, that version doesn’t seem to allow files to be attached to notes, edited, and resaved immediately in the same note. The file has to be saved elsewhere and then moved back into the note, a workaround about which I wasn’t particularly crazy.)
Over the years, I’d accumulated quite a lot of data in Evernote. So, I was glad to see Microsoft’s Evernote to OneNote importer. Michael’s experience with importing notes was “a complete and utter mess,” but for me, things actually went quite smoothly.
OneNote has also gotten supported by a fairly convenient web clipper. Evernote’s web clipper might be slightly nicer in the abstract, but OneNote’s is definitely close behind. As with Evernote, OneNote also allows for emailing notes into a notebook.
Borrowing a page from the Franklin-Covey book, I’ve taken to setting up my OneNote notebooks in one tab per month. Then, I create a blank page numbered with the date out of that month and use the “subpage” feature to organize notes for that day underneath that main note. Tabs for months other than last month, this month, and next month get moved into an archival notebook for the year.
Very large OneNote notebooks do sometimes seem to have issues syncing to mobile devices. But, in the main, my experience with OneNote has been quite pleasant. It doesn’t have the tagging features that Evernote does, but OneNote’s search function has generally been quite sufficient so that I haven’t found myself wishing for greater tagging functionality. So, if you’ve been looking for a digital notekeeping tool and haven’t yet given OneNote a test run, you may want to give it a try.
The American Numismatic Society has created an Open Access digital library. One purpose is to host unpublished and/or orphaned MA and PhD theses/dissertations that have numismatic content. As a part of this library your thesis will be Open Access, full-text searchable, and http://schema.org properties will help Google relevance. If you (or someone you know) wants their research hosted for free (CC-BY license) alongside other numismatic work, email Andrew Reinhard at [email protected].
[A] digital repository of research output from the University of St Andrews. Since 2006 the University has required theses to be submitted to the repository. . . . The [email protected] Portal provides links to the full text of research publications which are stored in [email protected]:FullText.
For those interested, Mark Hoffman has already provided a helpful, general review of some of STEP’s current functionality.
Update (8/2): Via email, David IB especially encourages STEP testers and users “to click on the ‘Feedback’ button in STEP with bugs, errors and their wish-list of features they can’t find.”
