From owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Mon Jun 8 21:53:52 2009 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.freebsd.org (mx1.freebsd.org [IPv6:2001:4f8:fff6::34]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 916E31065687 for ; Mon, 8 Jun 2009 21:53:52 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from wmoran@potentialtech.com) Received: from mail.potentialtech.com (internet.potentialtech.com [66.167.251.6]) by mx1.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 63F9C8FC2E for ; Mon, 8 Jun 2009 21:53:52 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from wmoran@potentialtech.com) Received: from working (pool-72-95-226-5.pitbpa.ftas.verizon.net [72.95.226.5]) (using TLSv1 with cipher DHE-RSA-AES256-SHA (256/256 bits)) (No client certificate requested) by mail.potentialtech.com (Postfix) with ESMTPSA id 531EBEBC0A; Mon, 8 Jun 2009 17:53:51 -0400 (EDT) Date: Mon, 8 Jun 2009 17:53:50 -0400 From: Bill Moran To: Daniel Underwood Message-Id: <20090608175350.007d0f9c.wmoran@potentialtech.com> In-Reply-To: References: X-Mailer: Sylpheed 2.5.0 (GTK+ 2.12.11; i386-portbld-freebsd7.0) Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Cc: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: PDF inventory software X-BeenThere: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: User questions List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Mon, 08 Jun 2009 21:53:53 -0000 Daniel Underwood wrote: > > I'm looking for a way to manage my personal collection of research > articles. Ideally I'd like some way to keep records on authors, > keywords, journals, and publication years of articles (PDF files) > downloaded onto my local drive. > > In the course of reading literature for research, it often happens > that I find myself wanted to return to something I have previously > read, but I only recall a few "things" about the article, often the > author and a keyword. Is there some inventory/database software (for > local use only) that can be easily used for this purpose? (The > closest things that comes to mind (conceptually) is "image collection" > software.) > > What are some of my options here? Just to add one more to the already list of good ideas. What about just using an RDBMS? These days, everyone seems to think you have to put some fancy web front-end on a RDBMS to make it useful, but SQL is pretty user-friendly. PostgreSQL, in particular, has some excellent full-text searching capabilities in the latest version. If you use a script to export the text from the PDF and insert into postgres, you then have a searchable database using word-stemming and all the other features of a full-blown search engine on steroids. -- Bill Moran http://www.potentialtech.com