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With #AHA19 out of the way, the new year has begun for #twitterstorians. If one of your resolutions is to do research more effectively, here are my methods videos from 2018. In this thread, I'll break down the videos w/ separate links for each section
Using the library. This also introduces the color-coding scheme that undergirds keeping my entire approach to organizing research materials.
Keeping up on books in your field.
Reading + taking notes on PDFs.
Using @zotero.
+ Zotfile! This is the longest section of the video, but worth it. Integrating Zotfile into my research practices was one of the best things I did in 2018.
Tagging + organizing PDFs.
Keeping a research diary.
Develop good practices for backing up your work!
Onto Research Methods for Historians, Part 2. First, build redundancies into your research practices, so you have several ways to track something down.
Equipment for digitizing archival records.
Making the most of your time in the archive by creating an index of materials you plan to/have consulted.
Always be sure to photograph the box + folder whose documents you’re consulting. Take a picture of something brightly colored b/w folders/boxes so you can differentiate b/w image thumbnails when it comes time to organize.
How to organize archival photos. Simplicity is key here: use a basic program to upload images from camera (I use ImageCapture on my Mac), then recreate the structure of the archive in folders.
Index your documents. I have a master spreadsheet called DocBase where I keep track of what documents I’ve read + then record citation information when it’s time to cite.
How to batch rename image files. I don’t see the point in taking the time to do this w/ larger collections, so long as you keep on top of your other organizational strategies, but I do rename smaller sets of documents I’ve digitized.
Notetaking. I highly recommend @devontech’s DEVONthink. Intrigued by @tropy; may adopt it for handwritten docs as my research moves back into the 19th century.
@devontech @tropy Always keep each line of notes paired with its metadata!
Outlining. I paste my notes into files for each section. DEVONthink is ok but not ideal for this; I’ve recently switched to @ScrivenerApp.
@ScrivenerApp Backload your citation work. That is, don’t write out every primary-source citation at the start; do it after you write, so you’re only generating citations you’re actually using.
I don’t tend to OCR digitized documents, except to track down a quote/some information in a longer document. I’ve used Adobe Acrobat Pro for this (but found out yesterday Google Docs has OCR functionality!?).
I’ve also put together a couple of other short threads with complementary research practices:
This second thread covers some of the minor but still important points I cover in the videos and didn’t summarize here:
