Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with archiving

How can I keep track of academic papers and my handwritten notes on them?

col_pogo — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 13:28:29 -0800

What is the best hardware/software system for keeping track of a) hundreds of academic papers in PDF form and b) my handwritten notes on these hundreds of papers? Bonus if the answer integrates with some sort of citation management software. I am in a PhD program that requires me to read and take notes on a large number of papers. I can see myself in four years time simply drowning in printouts. My problem is somewhat similar to this previous question.

I don't like reading while sitting in front of my computer (typing hurts and easy internet access kills my productivity), so I tend to print out PDFs and take notes all over them while reading in cafes, libraries, on planes, etc. (Zotero's note system, for instance, isn't great for me because I don't like reading in my browser and typing notes). An ideal system would allow to me read much as I do, but make my notes--and interesting quotes and passages from what I'm reading--searchable for when I'm writing papers, studying for orals, etc.

The problem at that moment is that I end up with all these papers and notes that aren't easy to archive and can't be searched. I fear I don't have the discipline to properly archive all my actual paper notes, and hope that there's a technological fix out there for me.

I'd like advice on whether my best option is
a) a Tablet PC (with what software?)--one potential problem with this would be bulk and the distracting internet access.
b) an eBook reader that supports annotation (the upcoming IREX one?) with some sort of arching software to upload to.
c) One of those smart pens that records what you write (Previously). If these really work and can be integrated with good archiving/searching software I can see this being helpful for interviews and class notes, too.
d) Scanning notes taken on paper into my computer and archiving them from there. Something that sounds onerous and that I probably wouldn't actually do.
e) some brilliant technological solution that hasn't occurred to me.
f) knuckling down and getting a disciplined paper archiving system.

Could these options--a) in particular--be combined with Atlas TI? I love that QDA programs let me jump to specific tagged passages--and apparently the latest version has good support for PDFs. Or will OneNote--or some Mac program I haven't heard of--do this kind of thing better?

I have fairly atrocious handwriting, so OCR doesn't seem to work that well (in Evernote, for instance). I was impressed by Vista's handwriting support the one time I tried it, however--and I gather it learns from its mistakes.

I've heard Apple has a similar option, and would be willing to switch to using Macs if their handwriting recognition or the various note-taking programs I've heard about (Devonthink, Scrivener, Papers, others?) can be combined with some sort of note-capturing system.

I also take notes in lots of books. Any good ideas for capturing these notes that might fit with one of the above options?

DIY archivist!

liketitanic — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 08:45:45 -0800

How can I develop a plan to help a small community organization organize its archival materials (something like a self-accessioning plan, I guess)? What should I read? Who should I talk to? I'm not an archivist and have no information science training. There, I said it. But I have a pretty great opportunity to help a small community org self-accession and organize some records that could prove quite valuable to researchers. I don't yet know how big the collection is, nor whether they want physical or digital storage.

How do I go about learning what I might need to know to do this? Or how do I self-educate in archives work? Book recommendations? OpenCourseware recommendations? Software I should learn? Any suggestions?

Creating a small library for a non-profit

andendau — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 15:29:18 -0800

Looking for resources on creating a small library for a non-profit company I am currently a MLIS student and for the summer break I found a volunteer opportunity with a non-profit to assist them in creating a library. I have quite a few texts but nothing that involves a step by step guideline to assessing a variety of media and organizing it. I am interested in helping this organization set up a scaffold so that material Is accesible and available through an OPAC and would make it easy for a novice to come in and add new materials. I found a few older threads that had similar information but mostly on the OPAC side and not on getting started. Any input would be welcome.

Trying to Find an Article on Data Preservation

rollick — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 12:40:37 -0800

What article did I read on preserving personal data? About one or two years ago I read a blog post -- I am almost certain it was on livejournal -- about preserving your data with an eye to the future. It included advice like "print anything important with a laser printer on heavy paper stock" and "save your documents as plain text files, with at most basic markup" (not actual quotes).

I liked it because, iirc, it was generally aimed, and had some interesting information on the history of paper and rates of degeneracy for different media.

Does anyone know what this was, or any similar articles?

Newspaper Clippings 2.0?

[insert clever name here] — Thu, 07 May 2009 15:36:38 -0800

Can I automate archiving/saving news articles on a certain topic I pull from google new's rss feed? For a while, I was manually copying and saving all news articles from google on a certain topic I got in my rss feed. But it became cumbersome so I stopped. Now I've looked back at those articles from a few years ago, and wish I had kept up. Is there a way to automate something like that? A modern day newspaper clipping collection only automated? I don't want to save just the url, but the actual text of the article, where it is from, date, and possibly pictures.

This is for my own personal use, so I doubt it would fall under any copyright issues (I would assume).

I did a search but my google fu is failing me. I keep coming up on the google news archive, but thats not really what I'm looking for. I want my own personal copies. I don't now how google news archive works, but I know that some articles I had gotten from google news originally are not in their archive (I just checked.).

Quicksilver loses track of moved files. Why no?

middleclasstool — Sun, 01 Mar 2009 18:48:12 -0800

How can I get Quicksilver to keep track of files that have moved? I'm running QS B54 on OS X Leopard, and love the heck out of it, but I have only one problem with it (beyond some minor buggy lack of functionality since a1c0r stopped supporting it, anyway). The problem is that I'm also running Hazel, and I have a rule set up that scans for anything in my Documents folder that's been untouched for more than n weeks and moves it to a subfolder labeled "Archive." Keeps only new and relevant stuff in Documents, so it's easier to browse.

However, I've noticed that after Hazel moves a file, QS can't see it anymore. If I go browsing for a file in my archive folder and manually open it, then QS again has it indexed, but I'd rather (if this is possible) somehow configure QS so it keeps track of the file or folder even after it's been archived. Is there a way to do this?

A question about corporate file sharing.

grumblebee — Wed, 14 Jan 2009 08:19:14 -0800

My friend runs a small company that is growing. They're starting to run into file-sharing problems (versioning, archiving, etc.). Laboring under the bizarre belief that I know something about this stuff, my friend has asked for my help. The company used to be two guys in Europe. Now it's about fifteen people in several countries (and continents), all collaborating. When it was just the two guys, it was easy for them to share files. Now it's getting complicated. They need a file and discover it's only on one guy's hard drive. and that guy is asleep (time-zone issues). Or there are several versions of a file floating around, and no one is sure which one is the most recent one.

I know about (and have used) svn and git, but I'm curious if there are any books or websites that go into details about this sort of collaboration and list good tools and techniques.

Note: this is a design shop, so many of the files are binary (Flash and PSD). This makes the svn thing a little tricky if there are conflicts. Or does it?

In any case, I'd like a resource or resources that gives suggestions for archiving (they have an svn, but it's getting huge), file sharing, naming conventions, etc.

They are mostly mac-based, but they have a few PCs on their network.

How do I track my DVD-Rs?

tommorris — Tue, 25 Nov 2008 19:18:20 -0800

Is there any good, free UNIX/Linux software you can suggest for keeping a searchable index of removable media? I have a large collection of backed up files on DVD-R (about five or six hundred volumes). I have been using a proprietary and rather crufty application called CDFinder. My Mac laptop has become rather less stable recently (and I haven't got enough money for one of them nice new MacBooks), so I've made the leap to a netbook running Linux. This is the one application I can't find a decent equivalent for.

Ideally, I want an application that will maintain a database of all the metadata about the files on burned CD/DVD volumes. That metadata will obviously include the file names, creation/modification dates, but also ID3 data for audio files and the equivalent metadata for videos, photos, PDFs and all the other stuff I haven't really thought about. Search speed isn't tremendously important - it doesn't bother me if it takes fifteen seconds to do a search.

One of the things I would like would be for the data to be in an open format, and for the search tool to be usable from the command line (so I can use it over SSH).

I have done some Googling, but all I can find are the sort of things record collectors would use to keep track of their albums. Not what I want: I basically want UNIX's metadata-aware 'find' or 'locate' commands for unmounted volumes.

I've been thinking about building something like this myself as a fun little open-source project over the Christmas holidays. If someone has a suggestion of an existing project that would do what I want that is free, open source and preferably not tied to any windowing environments (command line ftw!), I'd be greatly appreciative.

Help me find the image manager of my dreams?

verb — Sat, 03 May 2008 11:23:07 -0800

I'm sitting on an extensive collection of ephemera and period clip-art. I use it a lot for designs, presentations, and assorted projects, but as it's grown organizing the contents has turned into an impossible task... Is there a file/image management program out there that will let me keyword-tag the images, search them, browse thumbnails, and so on? My ideal solution would be a Spotlight-integrated tagging solution in Finder, and SpotMeta seemed perfect. Unfortunately, it's been abandoned and no longer works in Leopard.

How do you deal w. all that old email?

ManInSuit — Thu, 03 Apr 2008 08:20:31 -0800

I'm curious how people deal w. their old email. (esp those using Outlook and IMAP, but others, too...) Hi. I’ve asked a related question here before, and seen others who have asked related stuff, too. But I still haven’t found an answer that quite works for me, so I thought I’d try again.

I assume I’m not particularly unusual in how I handle my email:

- I send and receive tons of mail
- I like to spend as little time as possible filing/sorting it. (Most of my mail just goes into a giant “done” folder when I’m finished with it)
- I like to be able to search it, fast. I do this a lot. My email history is kind of my life and my filing system.
- I keep more or less everything
- I like to be able to access my mail when I’m offline on my laptop (though I guess, really, I do this less and less often, as net access is more ubiquitous)
- I also like to be able to access archives of my email from the web when I’m away from my computer.

What I use now is:
- MS-Outlook 2003 (about to upgrade to 2007): I like it pretty well, and would rather not change, though I would if there were some perfect do-everything other solution.
- Lookout to search my email. (Which I’m guessing I might not need when I switch to Outlook 2007).
- I use fastmail.fm as an IMAP server, and occasionally use their web interface to get at my mail when away from my computer.

Things mostly work pretty well.

The problem is that dealing with old email is a hassle. The biggest problem is that Outlook gets slow and unreliable as my PST file gets enormous. A less-pressing problem is that eventually I may run of space on fastmail (a 4 GB limit).

I figure I shouldn’t have to make Outlook open my Entire Mail History From Forever every time I open it up. Most of the time, I only need immediate access to, say, email from the past year or two. But once in a while, I need to be able to get at the older stuff. When I do, I’d like to be able to do a reasonably quick, powerful search.

There must be some useful way to keep my older mail separate, in a reasonably searchable form, but I haven’t figure it out.

I’m really curious: How do other people deal with this?

Is there an easy way to use multiple outlook psts and have them all be searchable?

Is there an easy way to remove folder/messages from an outlook PST while leaving them on the IMAP server? (I’d just as soon leave those old messages up there. There's tons of space on the server…)

Am I foolish to be using outlook for all this? Mostly, I like it well, but its crappiness in the face of large PST’s is really annoying.

Thanks, Green, for any ideas!

Batch image compression on Windows Server?

bloodniece — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 08:02:59 -0800

Can anyone recommend a small/lightweight image compression program that can run on Windows Server 2003? Thanks We are archiving large amounts of jpeg and tiff files but want to leave behind lower resolution reference images. Is there a program that you can say, right click over a folder and compress the entire contents of said folder?

Ah, the days before digital.

sararah — Mon, 25 Feb 2008 07:49:43 -0800

I'm looking for the best way to get good quality scans of old photos and then store them permanently in archival albums or envelopes. On a recent mission to declutter and avoid Actual Work, I have been sifting through the contents of my closet and going through old photos and paperwork. I started scanning in a few of the photos, but my free with mail-in rebate Canon MP460 isn't really the greatest for archival work. I personally don't have a ton of pictures (although I probably have several hundred), but if this works well I would also consider doing it for my parents. I don't really have many of the negatives or they are in complete disarray, so scanning the prints is going to be the best option for me. Most of the photos are 4x6 prints, many of them glossy finish, developed at your local megamart, etc.

-What are online or local scanning services that would do the best job of archival scanning of pictures? I live in Iowa so the closest "metropolis" to me is Des Moines.
-Alternatively, is there a reasonably priced scanner that I should buy that would pay for itself versus sending the photos out?
-After I'm done scanning everything, how to store? Some my pictures are already starting to stick to themselves, and I'm sure many of my parents' are just as bad. I'm looking for the best acid-free photo albums or envelopes/boxes.

Need a stable external drive for long-term archiving purposes

Senor Cardgage — Thu, 19 Jul 2007 12:21:37 -0800

Can anyone suggest an affordable, stable external hard drive for archiving purposes? Im not exactly a techie, so forgive me if this is a dumb question.

Im art director for a magazine and even tho we do a server backup of each issue, we want to cover our asses and get an external in case of fire, emergency, whatever.

We need to find an affordable external drive that is as solid as possible WRT data loss.

Are they all pretty much the same, or is there soemthing I should be looking for?

What is the easiest way to automatically archive multiple IMAP accounts?

philrj — Sun, 08 Jul 2007 18:09:18 -0800

What is the easiest way to automatically archive IMAP emails (incoming and outgoing) from multiple user accounts? Gmail doesn't handle IMAP and I don't have access to our school's server. We need a central location to archive our research projects emails. Mac, PC, or web method okay.

The Electric Slide... Scanner

prophetsearcher — Fri, 20 Apr 2007 12:23:43 -0800

Looking for a scanner to process hundreds (or more) of 35mm slides as automatically as possible - at decent quality, for a decent price. Suggestions? My parents have boxes and boxes of old family and vacation slides that I would like to archive digitally. I might find a few gems in there that I'd like to tweak in Photoshop and have printed, but for the most part I think they should just be decent digitizations.

I've searched online and in the archives, but haven't gotten a real sense of what a solution would look like, and for how much. I'm willing to spend a couple hundred dollars if it means I can drop in a batch and walk away. I'm on a Mac G4 Powerbook.

Ever the industrialist, I'm also thinking that if I find a good workflow, I can make some extra dollars converting neighbors' slide collections as well, and perhaps posting my services on Craigslist.

Any advice, suggestions, insights? If you can point me towards specific devices that have served you well, all the better. Let me know if you need more info. Thanks, amigos!

Please no plastic sleeves if at all possible.

amtho — Fri, 09 Mar 2007 09:23:49 -0800

Glossy photos facing each other? I'm putting photos into a scrapbook using old-fashioned photo corners, so they're mostly exposed. I've got half of my 200+ photos mounted, and suddenly wondered whether I should have avoided having their surfaces touch when the book is closed. I really *like* being able to use both the left and right pages, and this is a really photo-intense project. The photos look great mounted on the spacious (9 x 14) pages, and each set of facing pages goes together. But will the facing photo surfaces meld together over time? And is there anything I can do about it?

If I do need to worry about it, can just I put some kind of onion-skin sheets between each page? Or treat the photos somehow?

Apparently I can buy sheet protectors (2nd item down) that go with this specific book, but they are $5 for 10, and I'll probably end up with 70 - 100 pages.

I was hoping there was a simpler solution that didn't involve a lot of plastic. I really don't like plastic and would prefer to avoid plastic sleeves.

I've considered just putting a blank refill page between each set of two pages, but geez that won't look very nice. And I'd love to be able to just sit down and page through the thing.

I hesitated to use a "scrapbooking" tag because, as far as I can tell, this isn't scrapbooking in the currently-popular sense, but what the heck.

How do I get everything off of a CD?

reventlov — Fri, 29 Dec 2006 22:39:53 -0800

I want to make sure that the next time I rip my CD collection is the last time. What should I know? I want to rip all information that I possibly can from my CD collection--CD TEXT, CD+G, ISRC codes, data tracks/sessions, audio tracks, audio in the space before track 1, audio in the gaps between tracks, and index marks. Am I missing anything? And if I am, is there a tool available for Linux that will let me read it?

saving a newspaper article

rdr — Tue, 28 Nov 2006 18:34:36 -0800

I want to save a physical copy of an article in today's New York Times. I'm guessing that newsprint deteriorates rapidly but what can I do to slow the process?

What's the best way to display and protect a book?

Optimus Chyme — Thu, 17 Aug 2006 11:23:54 -0800

What's the best way to display and protect a book? I have a signed galley copy of Infinte Jest, and while it isn't worth thousands, it's the one book whose condition I care about. I'd like some sort of case I can put it in for display and worship, ideally under fifty bucks. Anything like this out there? Any items I can cleverly use for this purpose?

Storing data online & piping data info to a file

Gyan — Mon, 24 Jul 2006 15:41:42 -0800

I'm selling my current computer soon. There's a few GB worth of files that I'd like to preserve. Are there any free or cheap online services that will provide this service? I'll only need access to it once or twice later on, to restore it on my new computer. I only have a few blank CDs and not enough time to burn everything, and no concurrent access to the two computers. Besides, I prefer flexible online access. On a related note, I'd like store some information about the files in a text file. In the good ol' DOS days, I could pipe the 'dir' output to a text file. Except these files have some metadata that can't be displayed in the command prompt. Equivalent functionality for Windows Explorer or other GUI shells?

Picasa over a network. Possible?

jonathanbell — Wed, 24 May 2006 13:31:31 -0800

Picasa 2: a question about how to share pictures over a network. My photos are kept on a folder on my desktop computer. A copy of Picasa 2 scans this folder and is used to sort and upload, etc. My question is whether I can get the same functionality from my new laptop over a wireless network. Having installed Picasa on the laptop, can I set it to scan the photos folder over the network so all the favourite images, sets, etc., are mirrored and we can upload from around the house? Picasa's 'import' function doesn't seem to offer many options; supporting only images and not folders.

Adminstrative tools for Exchange to view mailboxes and retain deleted messages?

geoff. — Tue, 04 Apr 2006 12:47:56 -0800

What are some good mail archiver solutions for Exchange 2003? The goal: view mail across mailboxes, retain deleted messages. GFI MailArchiver is sloppy but it does exactly what I need, it has some serious database management issues and poor support (which wouldn't be needed if the product ran correctly). Restoring mailboxes from backups to view messages is too arduous.

I need a Terabyte!

unSane — Wed, 22 Mar 2006 12:04:14 -0800

What's the best way of adding a Terabyte of reliable, contiguous, archive-quality storage to my system? By 'best' I mean Toyota Corolla as opposed to Hummer. OK, here's the deal. I have about five or six hard drives dangling off my Mac, about 600 Gb or so. At some point in the next year I'll be upgrading to an Intel Mac and I really want to get rid of my ad hoc storage system.

I intend to do what I do at the moment, which is to have a pair of internal system drives which are mirrored every night, so if one physically fails I simply boot from the other and keep working. (I also have two different incremental offsite backups in case of disk corruption).

What I want in addition to this is about (at least) a terabyte of reasonably fast storage. (It doesn't have to be record-breaking). This is mostly used for very large image files (250Mb -- > 1 Gb). Ideally it would be

1. Hardware fault tolerant, so if one disk in the array fails I don't lose any data
2. Use as much commodity hardware as possible
3. Be as scalable as possible by adding commodity hardware
4. Self-monitor for corruption etc
5. Reasonably quiet, although I can relocate it if it needs to be loud

I am quite happy to build something myself as you would build a PC.

What I don't want is what I have at the moment ... a bunch of drives in mismatched firewire casings of odd sizes with no very good filing system filled with random stuff most of which I'm afraid to delete in case I don't have a back up, and which will take out large quantities of important data if it fails.

I have *way* too much data to consider online storage a al Amazon or Gdrive.

A tape backup is a possibility if it's more cost effective than other solutions.

I would imagine I'm talking some kind of RAID array here, but what kind? And what hardware should I be looking at?

Any social bookmark archive service that can bookmark, archive and export (in the future) a webpage that is likely to disappear?

studentguru — Fri, 03 Feb 2006 11:26:29 -0800

Any social bookmark archive service that can bookmark, archive and export (in the future) a webpage that is likely to disappear? I have been checking out some social websites that allow one to bookmark as well as archive in as a cached webpage for future reading .

In other words, I am looking for a bookmark archive service that will allow me to read a webpage even if the webpage is no longer hosted anywhere else.

IN ADDITION , the service can easily allow me to export the saved webpage to my hard drive in the future.

So far, only http://www.furl.net/faq.jsp#byeFurl seems to be the only that can do all these with relative ease. But it has its limitations because it cannot save some webpages with frames well.

I have checked out the following services and none of them comes close to what I want.

http://www.spurl.net/help/faq.php#data_safety

http://myweb2.search.yahoo.com/ ----- no export feature .

http://www.esnips.com/ from netsnippets.com ---- only 1 Gig free space. Does not look like it has export features.

http://hanzoweb.com/

http://www.clipmarks.com/

http://www.simpy.com/ ---- Exporting definitiely not as user friendly as http://www.furl.net/.

Does anybody know any service/invention/software that can allow me to bookmark and archive and export a saved webpage (in its entirety) with ease ?

Thank you very very much.

Medium/Large format scanning in Toronto?

kowalski — Wed, 02 Nov 2005 12:00:03 -0800

Does anyone know where I can access self-serve medium/large-format scanning services in Toronto? We have about five years of monthly, tabloid-format magazines that we would like to archive digitally (every cover and select articles/pages from each issue) on our website. Is there anywhere in Toronto where can we access a large enough scanner to do this ourselves at a reasonable rate? We don't need films or reprinting or any of that sort of thing, we just need to be able to scan excerpts from these issues into a digital format, and we'd prefer to do it ourselves.