the digital A-Z archive

H

haga2000

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I have a reasonable controle of the content in my analog A-z reference archive, which are organised according to Dave Allens suggestions. New copy machines can scan and deliver digital files of almost everything that up to now have been stored as hard copy.

Then a questions arises, how to organise the digital archive in such a way that it can receive the increasing number of digital files, and quickly to locate the right info when needed.?

Shall I get a kind of library program which stores author information, keywords etc. for my digital archive? I found that keeping a index system up to date is not a hard job as long as i do immediately when I store things (the 2 min rule), but a very boring job when i have several months of incoming info to register.

Any suggestions
 
one possibility: Same A-Z system for digital files

I've been trying a straightforward adaptation of the A-Z paper system to the digital realm, and I like it. My needs are relatively simple, but it may be an option for you. If you're interested, you can read some detail in Organizing Electronic Documents GTD-Style? There are some good comments there too.
 
haga2000 said:
Then a questions arises, how to organise the digital archive in such a way that it can receive the increasing number of digital files, and quickly to locate the right info when needed.?
Click to expand...

This an area which is changing rapidly, and I would hold off on getting an external program. Indexing and searching are getting embedded into the OS, and it is likely you will not need that program. Today, Mac OS X lets you not only search files, but also your comments on them. You can also have smart folders that find all files matching your criteria. M'soft is heading the same direction. I use smart folders to simplify my email folder management. Basically I have two folders for saving mail: Ref 06 and Permanent Reference. Everything is indexed into smart folders automagically for particular projects, et cetera. Very simple. You could even have smart folders to implement a virtual A-Z file system! :)
 
I just renamed My Documents to My DATA.
Then I put everything in there, all files and media, organized logically under A-Z with subfolders, etc, it has about 3GB of data right now, with about 50,000 files.
I also use an external harddrive for the overflow media, but when I get my new laptop, its all going to go in one place, probably about 10GB of personal DATA.

To find anything, I just browse, or search. It works fine.
As has been said, use a Desktop search if you want to. Let the software do the work. But you need some harddrive space for that
 
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