Using EverNote for Academic Research
April 23rd, 2006 | by GTD Wannabe |I received an email the other day from a fellow grad student, wanting to know about how I used EverNote for my research. Specifically, about how I used it as a bibliographic database, could it be used for keeping article information, notes, research thoughts, etc. organized. And how.
I spent a few hours writing up a reply, including a lovely screenshot of part of my actual database. I think it’s just a bit too big to turn into a blog post, so I turned it into an essay. If you’re interested in EN at all, check it out. For those of you who don’t want to read the whole thing, I’ll just include my summary here:
I think the beauty of EN is that you have so much flexibility with it. If you combine automatic keywords, the keyword intersection panel, and shortcut categories, you can make a very complex interweaving of all of your notes, writing, references, and thought. It’s definitely changed how I keep track of my research now. I’m no longer worried about losing track of information. In my old system, I found that I was never referring to my old notes because I didn’t know what was there. Now, I can write notes in the now, adding keywords as I go, and be comfortable with the fact that the next time I want to think about #analysis#, I can just find all of my notes on #analysis# and have nothing missing. I don’t have to remember that some arcane article that I read a year ago had something useful in it.
11 Responses to “Using EverNote for Academic Research”
By on Apr 23, 2006 | Reply
Wow and double wow. You really opened the machine this time. Thank you for this great demonstration. I noted your database has 2,800 notes +. Is the database behavior stable? I can’t believe EN will handle that much.
Thanks for a great post.
PS: I love the essay paradigm.
By on Apr 23, 2006 | Reply
Glad you liked the essay. It was time-consuming, but worth it I think. As for my database. Right now I have 2956 notes and the database takes up 77+ MB. I find it very stable. It opens fast, choosing notes is quick, searching is fast. The only slowdown I notice is when I make a new automatic category. Then it takes several long seconds to populate that category. But I can accept that, after all, it’s got to look through 2900 notes to see if each one fits!
By on Apr 24, 2006 | Reply
I tried EverNote for a while, but gave up as I coldn’e fathom how to make it work as a research tool. Now you’ve shown me. Thanks.
the other hassle I had with it was I couldn’t search its database with X1 (a desktop search engine similar to copernic) because it usees a proprietary file format. So searches had to be done in two different programs which was a pest.
Now I use a Wiki for notes and thus they are all saved in html format and can be searched with XI.
I found your categorization methodology fascinating and intend trying that out in my Wiki. Thanks for writing it out.
By on Apr 24, 2006 | Reply
Thanks very much, Michelle. I’ve passed it along to the grad students in our lab.
By on Apr 25, 2006 | Reply
@gordong: In case you didn’t know, EN stores its backups in XML, and I was able to get CDS to find me a particular backup file (and therefore EN database) by letting it search XML. Ugly, but effective. Of course, finding the term inside the file then required opening EN anyway, but if you had a lot of EN databases and didn’t know which one to look at, it was an option. I don’t bother myself, I just keep everything in the same database.
By on Apr 25, 2006 | Reply
@Matthew: Thanks. I hope they find it useful. I’m actually amazed at how little they really teach us as grad students. I mean, about getting work done. The best advice I ever got was during an introductory lecture to my University (held by our grad student society). The lesson: Google is your friend. I’ve had to basically make everything up after that.
By on Apr 27, 2006 | Reply
First, I’m glad to see you posting again. That was a long drought.
Second, dial back a little to the Slickrun .txt file hacks you blogged on. It turns out that there is an Evernote registry backdoor letting you designate an “Auto Import folder”. Drop a text file in it (or a .jpg) and Evernote automatically sucks it up and makes it a note, then deletes the file. Really.
For the hack, see the Evernote Forum>General Discussion>HP Scanners. The post is by Michael on 3/14/06. You can specify any subdirectory you wish in the registry entry. (Note: Michael is mistaken: you only have to make EN go into the background (Alt/F4) to initiate the import, not close it all the way with File > Exit.)
So I ran the “app.bat” against the import folder and it worked like a charm. Haven’t tried to extend the hack yet with something like updating the batch file to write to a .txt file and copy it to a second file in the import folder that is then sucked up by Evernote. More is possible.
One could also make an EN auto category with the word “scratch.txt” to auto-categorize the Slickrun entries for easy compiling and viewing. Try it, you will see what I mean.
Everytime I think of switching away from Evernote for some deficit, I find another feature to keep me there. I really like this one. Hope you like it.
By on Apr 27, 2006 | Reply
Re: The above, I am mistaken too. You don’t need to close Evernote at all for the import to happen. Evernote will suck in the text file while EN is still open and on-screen.
Woops. ;)
By on May 4, 2007 | Reply
The link to the essay is dead… Have you moved it somewhere else?
By on May 4, 2007 | Reply
Why yes, I just changed hosts. You can find it here: http://gtdwannabe.com/essays/usingENforResearch.htm