As part of my efforts to refocus and find time for writing/research each day I have been thinking a lot about how to best organize my work and how to most effectively use some of the many apps and tools available for these purposes. The key for me (and for many other academics, I suspect) is portability. If I’m serious about finding time for writing/research each and every day, I have to be realistic and realize that this may often be on my lunch break or squeezed in to an hour I have between meetings. I also need a system that works well across the many devices I use (my office computer, my laptop, my iPad). What I don’t want to have happen is to find myself with an hour or two of “free time” to work on my book manuscript, but to not be able to use that time effectively because my notes, research materials, and chapter drafts are not physically with me. I also don’t want to be wasting precious writing/research time fiddling with settings, syncing, and just generally trying to get a piece of software to do what it is supposed to do!

I’ve been playing with a number of apps and pieces of software over the past little while, but hadn’t really set up a proper system until recently. I guess I wanted to test-drive a few to see which worked best for me and also with one another–compatibility is key! There are four apps/pieces of software that have risen to the top for me: Zotero, Dropbox, Evernote, and iAnnotate PDF. I like these because they have many useful features, are easy to use, and work well with one another. At the start of this semester I spent some time setting up a system that I’m hoping will help me stay focused:

1. I switched from EndNote to Zotero because of the portability factor. I was getting really frustrated with having my “library” on my home computer but only working from that computer a fraction of the time. So far so good. It was easy to import my Endnote library, and really like the ability to capture citations right from my browser! I can now access my library from anywhere I have an internet connection.

2. Dropbox rocks my world. Chapter drafts, articles to be read, image files are all just there waiting for me when I need them. No more worrying about whether I’m working from the most recent version of a document or not. I upgraded to a Pro account so I have more storage, and it is totally worth it. I love how easy it is to use, and I really love the new feature where my photos from my iPhone are immediately uploaded to Dropbox, a fabulous back-up system for any photos, but an especially great tool for keeping track of the photos I take on research trips.  Simply fabulous!

3. Like most academics, I take a lot of notes. I have handwritten notes scribbled in notebooks, typed notes on the computer, notes I wrote on my iPad with my stylus, etc. The trouble is, I hadn’t stopped to come up with a way to organize them. I would spend far too long looking for notes that I took on a book that I only vaguely remembered (“umm…I know I read a book that mentioned this last summer, what was it? The title had the word “Peace” in it and might have had a blue cover…”). Enter Evernote, a fabulous tool that works on my computers, iPhone, and iPad. You can set up multiple, searchable “notebooks” that then sync across devices. I am in the process of taking all those wayward notes and putting them in to an Evernote notebook called “notes for new book.” Transferring them all is time-consuming, but I am sure this will end up being time well-spent. I also have a notebook in Evernote with the images I am using for this project as well as a master “to-do” list.

4. iAnnotate PDF is another tool that I’ve started to use lately, and I find it especially great for reading journal articles as you can highlight and make annotations on the PDF document as you read. I do eventually still make notes in Evernote, but I find this a really useful intermediate step in the research process.

I’m sure there are other tools and systems that people have found useful for organizing a writing project. I’d love to hear about them!

I’m now about half way through my term as Dept. Chair, a post that has come with a relatively steep learning curve. Suffice it to say a PhD in Art History does little to prepare one for the realities of University administration. However, there are many good people around me that have been patient and helpful, something for which I am very grateful.

I think the most difficult thing about this post is that it is incredibly difficult to carve out sustained writing and research time. I’ll have an afternoon here or there, but the amount of time between these sessions means that I spend most of this precious found writing/research time trying to figure out where I left off. I need to get better and finding a way to implement regular, sustained writing/research sessions, even if they are shorter. As I learned while on sabbatical, it is the frequency of these sessions more than the length that really makes the difference.

Last summer I took two weeks vacation time (something I’ve only done once before since finishing the PhD, probably not a good idea) to have a mini writing retreat. I had a colleague take over as “Acting Chair” (see point above about helpful, good people around me) so that I could just focus on the book manuscript I have been working on. 2 glorious weeks of just thinking, writing, reading was just what I needed and felt more restorative than if I’d taken those two weeks to travel. Don’t get me wrong, I love travelling, but I was aching for some focused, quiet time with my research. In December I took at trip over to London to spend some time at the British Library for the same reason. This time another wonderful colleague stepped up and was “Acting Chair” in my absence, allowing me to make the trip.  I found a great flat walking distance to the library and quickly fell in to a routine that included hours in the reading rooms and then evenings filled with quiet reflection and free writing. Pure bliss!

These two writing/research “retreats” were amazing, but it is so difficult it is to get this kind of sustained time to really focus. I need to work harder at building this in to my daily schedule. When I was working on my PhD, Joan Bolker’s advice to “write first” and “write every day” really helped me to stay focused and finish quickly. It is time to go back to those basics!

I recently got an iPad 2 and am still discovering all of the ways that I can make use of it. In addition to being a “bigger iPhone without the phone” (how I initially conceived of it), I’m discovering just how useful it can be for research.

I have been playing with a number of different note-taking and “productivity” apps, but so far my favourites are Evernote and Penultimate. Evernote is kind of tricky to describe because it is just so darn robust. Think of it as an updated, improved and digital version of that big notebook/day timer/coupon holder/place to shove a photo of your cat that many of us lugged around in the 1990s. In the few short weeks since I signed up for my Evernote account (which is free, although you can upgrade to premium for more features – something I did pretty quickly once I figured out just how fabulous this software is!) I’ve used it for taking notes, for “clipping” sections of webpages I need to refer to later, and for storing photographs and documents. I’m sure there are all kinds of other uses for this software that I haven’t yet discovered. Penultimate may be easier to describe, but it is no less awesome. Basically it allows you to handwrite notes on the iPad. You can use your finger, but I like the stylus that I picked up for $15. You can scribble, doodle and erase to your heart’s content on pages that look like an old-school notebook. Why not just use a notebook? Well, this way all your scribbles and doodles are all in one place and not as likely to get misplaced. You can share your scribbles and doodles via email or save them as photos.

I just discovered today that these photos of your notebook pages can, in turn, be inserted in to your Evernote notes. These two applications work amazingly well together and I can see them really changing how I approach research. Today, for instance, I was trying to summarize a Sherlock Holmes story, so I whipped out my handy-dandy stylus, opened up Penultimate and scribbled down a few thoughts. I then saved it as a photo and popped it in to a larger Evernote note that I had started on the broader project I’m working on. Seamless. Easy. No more scraps of paper to lose. Yay!

I’m looking forward to seeing how the built-in camera in the iPad 2 works for taking photographs of documents in archives. I’ve got a few research trips planned this summer so will be trying it out soon!