I've been using a program called AskSam, a text-based database management
program which is superb for taking research notes and retrieving them.
I run it on a notebook which I bring to archives and libraries with me and
enter notes or just put in a reference to some photocopied material I have on
file. AskSam can use any word or string in the text as a keyword with which
to retrieve notes, but you can also use "fields" to identify notes by source,
date, subject matter. Then you run a search using whatever identifiers you
want to. It uses boolean logic so that you can ask for X and Y, X or Y,
X not Y, etc., and you can use several keywords. Anyone familiar with
searches on electronic card catalogs can easily learn to conduct
effective searches in an AskSam database.
More convenient is the capability of copying and pasting notes or citations
from your notes to the text in your word processor when you are writing up your
research.
I use the Windows version of AskSam. I find this version much easier to
use than the DOS version, and it makes moving from AskSam to Wordperfect
very easy.
Not the least of the benefits of taking notes this way is the saving of
space. A book-length research project can involve a dozen "shoe boxes" of
5 x8 notecards, plus lots of files with photocopy material. I can put
what must now be up to 2 thousand notes on one backup diskette.
The new version of AskSam is supposed to have a built in OCR program for
scanning records, so in the future, researchers can use a hand or desktop
scanner instead of keying in notes from books and journals.
AskSam is available fro Seaside software in Fla. The telephone no I have is:
1 800 1997. I got the windows version on an educational discount for $100...
worth every penny.
--Don Doyle
Dept. of History
Vanderbilt University
doylexdh@ctrvax.vanderbilt.edu