Apr 2010
Cool Tools
04/24/10 14:23
Okay, I admit to still being impressed by technology. While I don’t think tools are more important than work, I think a good set of tools makes the work easier, better, and more enjoyable.
I’ve just started using Tinderbox. For a long time, I was trying to convince myself that Endnote was really all I needed (yeah, I know. Need is a relative term. I do have a pencil and a pile of 3x5 cards, so I really don’t need any of this). Endnote, after all, is a killer reference app. You can import from just about everyplace, you can sort in complicated ways and save the searches. Attached to a Word outline, you can sort-of represent the way books and ideas network through, say, a historiography.
But not really.
I resisted Tinderbox for quite a while. The learning curve is very steep, I’ve read. There’s a problem with images in the present version on the Mac. It isn’t clear to me how to create a page that incorporates a timeline with a sort-of “internet-cloud-diagram” that will allow me to fly through my data, turn on the types of links I want to look at (responses, disagreements, lineages of ideas, etc.)...I’m not saying Tinderbox doesn’t do this. Actually, I suspect it does; but that it will take some time to get there.
In the meantime, I’m really happy with what I have figured out how to do, so far. I can map the bibliographies (or the parts I’m interested in) of the books I read. I can group the books by topic and put them on a timeline (I hadn’t noticed, from looking at the biblio in the book, for instance, how many of Patricia Limerick’s secondary sources were published in the ‘70s). I can easily find the books that keep popping up on everybody’s biblio, and promote them to my own field reading list.
I'm really impressed so far. I'm thinking of each of my maps of individual books is like one 2D layer -- when they all get slapped together, I'll have a 3D historiography.
And this is just day three, and the comps reading. The primary material...it’s going to be insane.
I’ve just started using Tinderbox. For a long time, I was trying to convince myself that Endnote was really all I needed (yeah, I know. Need is a relative term. I do have a pencil and a pile of 3x5 cards, so I really don’t need any of this). Endnote, after all, is a killer reference app. You can import from just about everyplace, you can sort in complicated ways and save the searches. Attached to a Word outline, you can sort-of represent the way books and ideas network through, say, a historiography.
But not really.
I resisted Tinderbox for quite a while. The learning curve is very steep, I’ve read. There’s a problem with images in the present version on the Mac. It isn’t clear to me how to create a page that incorporates a timeline with a sort-of “internet-cloud-diagram” that will allow me to fly through my data, turn on the types of links I want to look at (responses, disagreements, lineages of ideas, etc.)...I’m not saying Tinderbox doesn’t do this. Actually, I suspect it does; but that it will take some time to get there.
In the meantime, I’m really happy with what I have figured out how to do, so far. I can map the bibliographies (or the parts I’m interested in) of the books I read. I can group the books by topic and put them on a timeline (I hadn’t noticed, from looking at the biblio in the book, for instance, how many of Patricia Limerick’s secondary sources were published in the ‘70s). I can easily find the books that keep popping up on everybody’s biblio, and promote them to my own field reading list.
I'm really impressed so far. I'm thinking of each of my maps of individual books is like one 2D layer -- when they all get slapped together, I'll have a 3D historiography.
And this is just day three, and the comps reading. The primary material...it’s going to be insane.
No England trip this year
04/10/10 17:28
They ran out of space, and had to uninvite one or more of the people whose papers they’d previously accepted. Really.
So I won’t have a chance to go to the Bishopsgate Institute and look at the Bradlaugh files this fall. Well, maybe the following fall, after I’ve sold that project. I can write a proposal without the Bishopsgate material, after all.
As far as Rural History 2010 goes, it looks like there won’t be much North American representation there. I was hoping to get a better idea about how Europeans and members of the British Commonwealth do rural history. But based on the conference schedule, it looks like they do a lot of stuff that isn’t really that good a fit with what I’m interested in doing. So I can see why they thought my paper might be one they could afford to lose.
Life goes on. The change of plans will give me a chance to get to the Pacific Northwest and finish my research for this Dissertation/book project. Probably a better idea at this point, anyway.
The good news is that the family will be represented in England anyway this fall. Steph's hat has been selected to be in a fashion show and on display at the British hat museum! Story here.
