This is pretty much the system I use:
Replace the Hipster PDA for a small moleskine or moleskine weekly agenda and the rest is pretty much the same… Particularly the Moleskine Notebook part (I have a lined one instead of gridded) and the switching back and forth between scribbling on a paper and typing on a computer.
Check the full description at Getting Things Done in Academia
I found a neat article at Digital History Hack about how to easily and quickly be up-to-date with the current literature in your field. Check it out here. I set a site to keep track on Jewish history and it’s pretty neat although there aren’t as many online resources (particularly on the form of RSS feeds) for medieval Jewish history or medieval Spanish history as I would like…
From the Latin pro meaning for and cras meaning tomorrow… Ah, my days as an undergrad! I used to be SO organized… I set myself earlier deadlines for all my papers and assignment and always had them finished about a week before they were due. I wrote my honours thesis in about 2 months working only on fridays and during the week of spring break. I handed it in on March 23rd and my supervised joked that she probably shouldn’t accept it since nobody had ever submitted it so early before.
But then came grad school. I thought I could keep this up, that I would have more time to devote to each course, to the thesis, etc. How naive I was… Now I seem to be the queen of procrastination. I keep checking my email, writing blog entries, etc when I should be maximizing my research time. The truth is, my eyes are getting more and more tired of staring at the dark screen of a microfilm reader… Only 6 more weeks left!
For what it’s worth, here’s some tips on how to avoid procrastination. I’ll probably need to put these into practice when I get to TO.
Hmmm, seems I’m not the only one to think it could be useful. Check this out.
Scribe is turning out to be very buggy for importing info from my Bookends bibliography database. I came across DEVONthink, a really powerful information manager that seems VERY flexible and can index, search, organize, create wiki-style links, cross-reference, all kinds of files. It’s not free but it might be a good investment…
Take a look on the video here. Hmm, another toy to play with…
I’ve been playing with scribe 3.2 recently and I have to say, it has a LOT of potential. I tried to old version back when I was an undergrad but found it very slow and had to use. I couldn’t automatic input my sources – no importo available – the printing didn’t really work for me. It felt heavy and cumbersome. I ended up simply using Word to organize my notes for my undergrad research. I’m now working on my dissertation and need something a little more sophisticated. I have Bookends to handle my secondary bibliography and I created a simple database on FileMaker Pro to input my documents from the archives. Now I need something to bridge the two, something where I can organize all my subject notes – be it from primary or secondary sources. Scribe seems to be the tool I need.
My friend Jen P. has said many good things about it. The new version is much speedier and easy to use. Plus, having FileMaker Pro – which is what was used to design Scribe 3.2 – already means I have more flexibility with Scribe since I can edit some of its features to suit my needs as well as create as many databases with it as I want. I could even design a filter to easily import from my research database into scribe.
Yesterday I discovered two features that can prove very useful. One is the list of keywords. I knew you could add keywords to every source or notecard created and I figured it was just to make it easier to search. And in a way that’s what it does but in a much easier way – it works more like an index. You go to Lists->Keywords and a window with a list of all the keywords you’ve created shows up. You then click on a particular keyword and you end up with a list of all the notes/sources with that keyword. I think this could make the writing process much easier… Here’s some screenshots (don’t pay attention of the keywords I have, I was just testing the software):
Very nifty indeed… Of course, a lot of the fields are more appropriate to modern historians than to those of us pre-modernists but many of them can be adapted nonetheless. Need to play with it more and see…
I didn’t go to the archives this past week. I feel really bad but I did have a reasonable excuse – we are moving today and I needed the time off to organize things, clean the place, pack everything, ship some stuff to Canada… It’s a good excuse, right?
I did show up briefly at the archives on wednesday to pay my bill (I run a tab of my photocopies) and pick up some photocopies they had done for me. The security guy downstairs waved his finger at me when I got in saying “you missed two days!! I’m putting “falta” (absent) down for you every day!” I then explained I wouldn’t be coming all week as well. He rolled his eye in what’s-this-world-coming-to kind of way. Hehehe, I have a really good relationship with the whole staff, particularly the security staff and the people working the desk. After a year working there every day, they consider me part of the staff. There was a new security guard starting a couple of weeks ago and the senior guard was taking her around to introduce to the staff. I was reading something and he brought her over to me to introduce me as well. I really felt part of the place that day 
I don’t know why, but while I do research my thoughts are filled with teaching ideas. The lastest has been the possibility of using a blog interface as a course website. It’s a very handy platform, easy to master and preloaded with a host of interesting tools. The calendar on the side can guide students to particular lectures, which can be added as posts (long or short) in which students might dowload whatever material the instructor wants to distribute (lecture notes, powerpoint presentations, videos, images, etc) as well as ask questions. There could be posts with instructions on assignments or any other issue that arise in class. All posts can be categorized and searched. The whole site can also be easily password-protected. Course materials (syllabi & handouts) can be placed on a permanent page that would be always visible on the side bar.
What do you think? Can the more experienced instructors out there think of the drawbacks of such a system?
I´m on a slump. I don´t know what´s wrong but this past week or so have been really painful. Maybe the repetitive nature of my sources is getting to me. Maybe I´m just tired. Whatever the reason, I haven´t been able to concentrate much during this past week and a half. I sometimes spend over half an hour just staring at the microfilm reader´s screen and I´ve been stuck on the same register for the past three days! Alan thinks I should just take a week off. I´m not so sure, there´s stil too much to be done. But maybe he´s right. Besides, I could use the time to browse through some libraries, do a little research on secondary literature, read Elka Klein´s book on the Jews of Barcelona… I´ll think about it over the weekend.
Barbara Weinstein, the new president of the AHA and an inspiring professor that I’ve heard speak in an informal setting in Toronto, talks about the issue of mobility in Academia on the latest issue of Perspectives. I confess that the need for travelling is one of the main attractions of the academic life for me. I love the idea of having to travel for conferences and to spend the occasional summer or academic year abroad. Yet, sometimes life gets in the way and Weinstein speaks about what happens when a scholar can’t move around so much. Very interesting article.
