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.
