Reference library organization and management (Paper and Digital)

S

Salsadude

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As an architect and engineer I have an enormous amount of design reference documents in various types of media. I have a large book library, self made binders of documents and literature, details and various references, and digital media. The digital realm consists mainly of two types; books that are now in digital format and pdf reference documents on various topics.

I am failing miserably at trying to keep paper reference materials and computer based files sync'd and link'd. As I am applying GTD principles to my personal desktop and office space. I am finding that I have multiple printed copies of the same thing cluttering up my desk. Often times I forget I even have a reference for a topic already downloaded, and spend a great amount of time researching and downloading again.

Any ideas on reference library management, with an emphasis on dual system (paper and digital)?
 
I'm in the same boat with thousands of documents some on paper and others digital as well as many thousands of reference books. I'm also updating/reorganizing my entire filing system.

Here's what I am doing.

For paper: I am only keeping on paper the items that have legal significance or that I really need to reference via paper. Anything with an original signature or that is a legal document is being kept. Anything that is easier to use when on paper is being kept. Anything I might need in a location other than my desk is being kept on paper. They are all filed in folders alphabetical in my 6 file cabinets. I have several groups of items that are being kept separate in their own separate A-Z filing system, Genealogy research, Ditch Company papers, Sheep Association Papers, Manuals and receipts for equipment and the dead animal files.

I keep active project paper files in a separate drawer in my desk filing cabinet so that they are all in one place.

I am scanning in all other papers and saving them as PDF files that have a text recognition layer. They then enter the digital filing system.

For digital I have 5 main folders, Active_Projects, File_Cabinet, TDRC_File_Cabinet, ABWMSA_File_Cabinet and Secure_File_Cabinet. Active Projects contains the folders for the digital materials for my current active projects. The File cabinet is my big digital filing system. The next 2 are the ditch company and sheep association files and the last is an encrypted file cabinet that holds all personal, private or sensitive data.

Image files are kept in a separate system and indexed with Lightroom. I store image files in folders by year and then in folders by day picture was taken and rename them when I catalog them in Lightroom. Image files are the only ones I tag using a defined keyword system.

All files are being renamed with no spaces or punctuation in the name that would prevent it from being used on Mac, Linux or Windows systems. I am standardizing on a few file formats, PDF as described above for most reference material, Libre Office Write and Calc files for editable documents or spreadsheets, JPG and PNG and PSHOP files for images depending on source and whether I need tokeep the layers of an edited photoshop file. Dated files have the date in the beginning in the format YYYY-MM-DD_filename.extension

Within each "file cabinet" folder I have a single or at most 2 layers of folders to separate things by subject. These folders sort alphabetically easily.

For searching I have 2 DEVONThink databases each that is indexing the existing files, one for open stuff and one for the secured stuff. I can use DT's searching to find nearly anything quickly because it searches via context.

In my GTD system I note whether I have paper, digital or both types of reference material related to any given project. I also make sure that if I do have both types of data that the folders are named the same and reflect the project they relate to. So for example right now I have a project to refresh and update our business web site. I have a digital folder named Web_Site_Update and a paper folder labeled Web Site Update. My Omnifocus project is called Web Site Update and in the notes in the project I say that I have both digital and paper files.
 
Great question and great suggestions! Thanks Salsadude and Oogie for giving more direction to my evolving system--which gets better every year, but still isn't what it could be. I think that with time and the accumulation of data, it's too easy to have inconsistencies that make retrieval dificult. I especially like Oogie's rigorous parallel structure of the digital and physical systems. This is now a new Project in my OF system!
 
Another note, I find that a lot of the reference material I keep as digital files was originally found on the Internet. One common suggestion is to just keep the link or source but ditch the file. There are 2 main reasons this doesn't work for me and why I keep so much myself. Figured I'd share them as well.
  1. Many of the files I find and use then disappear or go away. The wayback machine is only so good, I've lost data permanently by depending on "the Internet" to keep it
  2. I am in a rural area with limited Internet access. Actually according to he FCC we are now in an unserved area not the underserved we had previously. Even if the item is still there I may not be able to get it again when I need it if the connection is poor or down.
 
My digital reference files are in Evernote (Premium), and I use the Web Clipper add in for Chrome (and Safari on my iThings) regularly to copy the article. That way I have full text search of my reference and am not concerned if the original web site disappears. A quality multi-sheet, dual-sided scanner is also one of my favourite tools ;)
 
Hi Oogiem,
Thank you for the detailed play by play. I got excited as I read your reply and thought that I had found the solution that I so desperately have been seeking the last few years. I excitedly hurried to the DEVONThink website to get started only to learn it is MAC os only. :(. I did have a brief glimmer of hope as I remembered my IT guy urging/forcing me to upgrade my server to a virtual server this last summer. I quickly shot off a text and got rolling, but quickly learned that our VM software doesn't nice with MAC os without a lot of hacking and tweaking. I searched for alternatives, but found that there just doesn't seem to be anything that remotely compares to DEVONThink for the PC.

Oogiem, I did gain valuable nuggets of information from your post that I am certain to implement, so thank you again!

I would like to add one more wrinkle to this that I recently remembered I am struggling with. Along with the books, binders, pdf's I know have a ribbon of bookmarks that I am wrestling for control of. I am sure it will be easy once I find, discover or create an organizational method for all the other files and media so that the bookmarks and links would be congruent.

I am working between my desktop pc, my galaxy S5 phone, and my Surface Pro 3 tablet. It is overwhelming!!!

I struggle with the digital medium being that I am a tacit learner and thinker. I must write, highlight, underline, make notations etc. as I read. So I print much of the information and put into a dedicated binder with cover and spline.

It would be nice if Adobe, Microsoft, GOOGLE, Amazon or someone, would actually develop an app that would allow us to easily capture the real analog world in a digital environment and give us the tools to freely annotate the digital world as necessary. I know you can mark-up pdfs, and there are a lot of apps that can do many things. I had almost given up hope until my recent purchase of the my Surface Pro 3 Tablet, while not quite perfect certainly leaps and bounds ahead of where I came from. Unfortunately I do not have the same robustness with my desktop system.

I also just started using Microsoft's OneNote. I like it a lot.

Any ideas on how to organize my library system?
  • I have basically the following;
  • engineering references
  • design references
  • architectural references
  • product info and tech literature
  • Building Codes-many, many, many
  • Design Guides
  • Industry Association References
  • How-to's
  • General Information
  • Marketing
  • Graphic Design
  • CAD/BIM references
  • Training
  • Software
  • Website Info
  • IT info
  • and the list goes on...
I seem to be stuck in stupid for the time being. Any help, ideas, suggestions, criticism or scrutiny is truly welcomed.
 
OneNote is great for organizing a ton of notes using sections as you listed. I've been using it since 2007 for all my reference material.

Sent from my Nexus 7 using Tapatalk
 
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