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Date:      Tue, 9 Jun 2009 14:04:45 +0200
From:      =?ISO-8859-1?Q?Gr=FCnewald_Micha=EBl?= <michaelgrunewald@yahoo.fr>
To:        Daniel Underwood <djuatdelta@gmail.com>
Cc:        freebsd-questions@freebsd.org
Subject:   Re: PDF inventory software
Message-ID:  <3D527043-AF88-4A26-8029-FD51159E6ABB@yahoo.fr>
In-Reply-To: <b6c05a470906081417x370edb66yb86fac71b462eab8@mail.gmail.com>
References:  <b6c05a470906081417x370edb66yb86fac71b462eab8@mail.gmail.com>

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Le 8 juin 09 =E0 23:17, Daniel Underwood a =E9crit :

> 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.

Hi Daniel,

I am also a researcher, and although I did not find any tool suited to =20=

the management of my article's collection, I elaborated a methodology =20=

I am rather happy with. Let me detail this methodology:

The atom in the organization of my collection of articles is the =20
directory, this is handy because in a directory you can store many =20
additional information along with the main file (the file containing =20
the article).

Each of these folders is stored in a vault. I choose the name vault =20
because, IIRC, the place a dragon uses to store its treasures is =20
called the =ABdragon vault=BB in the relevant literature. We, gathering =20=

all these articles we do not have time to read, are pretty much like =20
these dragons sleeping on their pile.

Here is the procedure to add an article to the collection:

1. I cd to the `vault'
2. I create a new folder to hold the article, usually with a rather =20
cryptic name (without accents nor spaces) obtained
3. I cd to this new folder
4. I copy the article under the name `paper.pdf' or `paper.djvu'
5. I create a text file called INDEX, looking much like an email =20
envelope, detailing the name of the authors and the article's title

During the life of the article in my collection, I will usually add a =20=

`mathscinet.bib' for the bibliography entry (when it is taken from =20
mathscinet), I may add reviews of the article and text dumps (all of =20
this with standardized names).

With this organization, it is pretty easy to dig the collection with =20
combinations of `find', `awk', and `grep'. Moreover, putting a =20
document in its folder makes the collection very flexible. I have even =20=

written a program producing a big `index.html' file from all of this, =20=

but of course it is currently broken and I have no time to fix it (I =20
shall soon defend by phD!). There is much more to do, to have the good =20=

tools managing this collection!

BTW, `djvu' is an alternative format to store articles digitally, it =20
has many qualities, among them djvu files are usually much smaller =20
than the corresponding PDF files (for retrodigitized papers). See =20
djvu.org!
--=20
All the best,
Micha=EBl




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