Research
Information
Management:
Organising
Humanities
Material
Course Book
Sudamih Project,
Oxford University Computing Services
SUPPORTING DATA MANAGEMENT
INFRASTRUCTURE FOR THE HUMANITIES
(SUDAMIH)
Research Information Management: Organising Humanities Material
About This Course Book
This handbook is part of a set of training resources covering various facets of research
information management. While written primarily for use as part of a taught course intended
to last about half a day, this handbook can also be used for private study.
Two accompanying resources are also available:

A PowerPoint slideshow, intended for use in a classroom setting

A set of exercise files, needed to complete some of the hands-on exercises in this
handbook. These are organised in folders named Ex erc i s e 3 to Ex erc i se s 8- 9 ,
plus the T ool G ui d e folder. In a classroom setting, each student needs to be
provided with a computer with Internet access and a copy of the exercise files.
The original version of this course was run as part of OUCS’s IT Learning Programme in
January 2011, and comprised a combination of lecture-style presentation by the course
leader, and hands-on sessions during which the participants worked on the exercises.
Member of Oxford University can access the ITLP version of the course materials through
the ITLP Portfolio site:
https://weblearn.ox.ac.uk/portal/hierarchy/asuc/oucs/itlp_courses/portfolio
Writing Conventions
A number of conventions are used.

In general, the word press indicates you need to press a key on the keyboard.
Click, choose or select refer to using the mouse and clicking on items on the
screen (unless you have your own favourite way of operating screen features).

Names of keys on the keyboard, for example the Enter (or Return) key, are shown
like this ENTER.

Multiple key names linked by a + (for example, CTRL+Z) indicate that the first key
should be held down while the remaining keys are pressed; all keys can then be
released together.

Words and commands typed in by the user are shown like this.

Labels and titles on the screen are shown l i k e t his .

Drop-down menu options are indicated by the name of the options separated by a
vertical bar, for example Fi l e | Pri n t . In this example you need to select the option
P r i n t from the Fi l e menu or tab. To do this, click when the mouse pointer is on the
Fi l e menu or tab name; move the pointer to Pri nt ; when P ri n t is highlighted, click
the mouse button again.

A button to be clicked will look like t his .

The names of software packages are identified like this, and the names of files to
be used li k e t hi s .
The instructions given are for computers running Windows XP: slight variations may be
necessary for other operating systems.
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Research Information Management: Organising Humanities Material
Rights and Reuse
This document and the accompanying resources were produced as part of the JISC-funded
Sudamih Project (http://sudamih.oucs.ox.ac.uk/) in early 2011. The original version of the
course book used a template provided by OUCS ITLP, and some elements of this (the
writing conventions listed above, and the table layout for the exercises) persist in this
version, and are used here with permission.
We are keen to encourage reuse and adaptation, and so these resources are made available
under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial Share Alike License
(http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/). If you would like to use them for any
purpose not covered under this license, please contact us on sudamih@rt.oucs.ox.ac.uk.
Most of the online resources mentioned in this book are available to everyone. A few,
however, are accessible only to members of Oxford University. Course tutors adapting this
material for use at other institutions may wish to substitute any similar resources that are
available to their students. A version of the course materials with the Oxford-specific
references removed is available from JORUM:
http://resources.jorum.ac.uk/xmlui/handle/123456789/14725
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Research Information Management: Organising Humanities Material
Contents
1 Introduction ........................................................................................................................ 1
1.1. What You Will Learn ......................................................................................................... 1
1.2. Where Can I Get a Copy? ................................................................................................. 1
2 Key Principles of Information Management ........................................................................ 2
2.1. The Basics ........................................................................................................................ 2
2.2. Honesty is the Best Policy ................................................................................................ 2
2.3. Skip the Guilt-Trip ............................................................................................................. 2
2.4. It Pays to Plan Ahead ....................................................................................................... 3
2.5. Be Realistic ....................................................................................................................... 4
2.6. Finding the Time ............................................................................................................... 5
2.7. So What’s the Point of it All? ............................................................................................. 5
2.8. Retrieval Methods ............................................................................................................. 6
Exercise 1 Small group discussion 1 ...................................................................... 7
3 Organising Paper Material .................................................................................................. 8
3.1. Identifying Your Working Style .......................................................................................... 8
3.2. Tips for Horizontal Organisers .......................................................................................... 8
3.3. Tips for Vertical Organisers .............................................................................................. 9
3.4. General Tips ...................................................................................................................... 9
Exercise 2 Self assessment questionnaire ........................................................... 10
4 Organising Electronic Material ...........................................................................................11
4.1. Hierarchical Organisation ................................................................................................ 11
4.2. Tag-based Organisation ................................................................................................. 12
4.3. Managing a Hierarchical System in Windows ................................................................. 12
4.4. Tips for Making a Hierarchical System Work .................................................................. 13
Creating Archive Folders ........................................................................................ 13
Access Files from Multiple Places Using Shortcuts ............................................... 14
Select File Names Carefully ................................................................................... 14
Adding Searchable Keywords to Files .................................................................... 15
4.5. Tools for Creating a Tag-Based System ......................................................................... 16
Bibliographic Software ............................................................................................ 16
Image Management Packages ............................................................................... 17
Gmail....................................................................................................................... 17
4.6. Tips for Managing a Tag-Based File Storage System in Gmail ...................................... 18
Exercise 3 Compare and contrast – hierarchical and tag-based organisation ..... 19
Exercise 4 Small group discussion 2 .................................................................... 21
Exercise 5 Creating a project folder using shortcuts ............................................ 22
Exercise 6 Forcing a file order using file names ................................................... 24
Exercise 7 Adding searchable keywords to a file ................................................. 26
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Research Information Management: Organising Humanities Material
5 Linking Notes and Sources ................................................................................................28
5.1. Hyperlinks within Documents .......................................................................................... 28
5.2. Bibliographic Software .................................................................................................... 28
5.3. Other Software ................................................................................................................ 28
OneNote ................................................................................................................. 28
Planz ....................................................................................................................... 28
NVivo ...................................................................................................................... 29
Scrivener ................................................................................................................. 29
A.nnotate ................................................................................................................ 29
Diigo ........................................................................................................................ 29
5.4. Working with Images ....................................................................................................... 29
Exercise 8 Linking files using hyperlinks .............................................................. 31
Exercise 9 Linking to a specific place in a file using hyperlinks and bookmarks .. 32
Exercise 10 Useful tools ....................................................................................... 34
6 Other Resources ...............................................................................................................35
7 Appendix 1: Further Reading .............................................................................................36
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Research Information Management: Organising Humanities Material
1 Introduction
1.1. What You Will Learn
This course introduces some techniques for managing research material, with a view to
helping you identify those that will work best for you and your research project. You will also
have the opportunity to try out some of these techniques yourself.
The following topics are covered:

Identifying your working style

Organising electronic material

Organising paper material

File and folder structures

Tagging vs. hierarchical filing

Retrieving information

Linking notes and sources

Linking text and images
The course will include a brief introduction to some software and online tools which may be
of use. Some of these tools are covered in more detail in a separate course: Research
Information Management: Tools for the Humanities.
We will assume that you are already familiar with simple file management tasks – opening
and closing files, creating new files and folders, and moving files around.
1.2. Where Can I Get a Copy?
The software mentioned in this course includes a mixture of freely available and commercial
packages. For most programs, a URL including further information about the software
(including how to acquire it) is provided.
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Research Information Management: Organising Humanities Material
2 Key Principles of Information Management
2.1. The Basics
The first thing to note is that there’s no single right (or wrong) way to organise your research
material. What matters is finding a system that works for you.
This means that when you start thinking about how to organise your information, you need to
consider two things – what’s important to you, and what you’re planning to do with the
information, so you can design your system to meet your needs. (It also means, incidentally,
that if anything in this course doesn’t work for you, you should feel free to ignore it.)
A second key principle is that being organised is a means to an end, not an end in itself. If
your system is doing what you need it to do, then it’s a good system – it doesn’t matter if it
looks a little rough around the edges, or if it’s unconventional, or even if it looks disorganised
to an outside observer. (Though if you’re working as part of a team, you may need to take
into account your colleagues’ needs and preferences!)
Good information management involves steering a path between two equal and opposite
pitfalls. One is doing too little, which tends to result in a gradual – or not so gradual – slide
into chaos. The other is becoming so obsessed with perfect organisation that maintaining
your filing system starts to take over from research. Key questions to ask yourself are:

Is there a good chance this will save me time and effort?

Is this going to make life easier in the long run?
2.2. Honesty is the Best Policy
However, there is a need for honest self-evaluation. We’ve probably all encountered people
whose offices are in perpetual chaos, but who claim that they know where everything is –
perhaps some of us have even been one of those people. If the claim is really true, then
however messy it looks, the system is working – assuming, that is, that the person isn’t part
of a team of collaborators who are struggling to use the same material. But in practice, if
we’re brutally honest with ourselves, we know that the cry ‘I know where everything is!’ often
actually means ‘I can find the things I’m working with right now, and anything else will
probably turn up if I root around for long enough’ – which may be enough to muddle through
on a day-to-day basis, but probably isn’t an efficient approach for the longer term.
2.3. Skip the Guilt-Trip
On the other hand, we shouldn’t allow ourselves to be made to feel guilty because our way of
doing things doesn’t match up to some perceived gold standard. It’s very easy to start feeling
that we’re doing something wrong if we’re failing to achieve some of the supposed ideals of
information management – a clear desk and an empty email inbox, for example. However,
while these are great aids to productivity for some people (and if you are one of those
people, go for it!), they don’t work for everyone. For a lot of people, the benefits brought by
(for example) filing every last email simply aren’t worth the time and effort it takes, and if
that’s the case, we should give ourselves permission just to do what we actually find helpful,
rather than trying to live up to an ideal which doesn’t – for us, at least – serve any very useful
purpose.
A particular issue is old files and folders – the material we accumulated during past research
projects, or perhaps when we were undergraduates, and which is organised in a way that
might have made sense for those past projects, but doesn’t really fit in with what we’re doing
now. We can sometimes feel as though there’s a dinosaur lurking in the cupboard – it’s old,
it’s bulky, and while we know what’s there is in theory interesting, it would take something
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Research Information Management: Organising Humanities Material
akin to a full scale-archaeological excavation to deal with it properly. So it often just sits
there, making us feel vaguely guilty.
Figure 1 Is there a dinosaur in your cupboard?
There are some situations where there’s a strong case to be made for doing something
about it. If a significant proportion of the material is being reused on a regular basis, and it’s
proving a hassle to have to keep digging things out of the old system, it may be worth taking
some time to reorganise it and integrate it with your more recent material.
Another possible approach is ‘organic reorganisation’ – set up the organisational system that
makes sense for the work you’re doing at the moment, and whenever you use an item from
the old system, put it away in the new one. During the transitional period, when things are
gradually being refiled, you may sometimes find you’re having to look in two places rather
than one, but this method doesn’t require you to set aside a large chunk of time, and you
won’t waste time refiling material that turns out not to be of any further use to you. But
whether you prefer to get the reorganisation out of the way all at once or let it happen
gradually is very much a matter of personal preference.
However, if you don’t need to refer to your older material very often, the best strategy may in
fact be to let sleeping dinosaurs lie – leave it exactly as it is. For rarely used material, the
benefits of reorganising everything properly are minimal, and are often simply not worth the
time and effort it would take. If you only need to find something from a particular set of files
once or twice a year, then even if it takes you an hour or so’s hunting to track it down, this is
almost certainly still more efficient than the large investment of time it would take to deal with
the whole collection. And unless you need the space it takes up for something else, even the
time it would take to go through and decide if it’s worth keeping at all is probably time that
could be better spent on other things. If it’s not in the way, you can legitimately decide to do
nothing – and not to feel guilty about it.
2.4. It Pays to Plan Ahead
While it’s a good general principle that you should be only as organised as you need to be,
this doesn’t mean just doing the bare minimum that’s necessary for the task currently in
hand. When gathering or organising information, it’s important to think about what you’re
going to do with it – and even to have half an eye on what you might want to do with it at
some point in the more distant future (are you collecting data that could be reused in another
project, for example – either by you or, if you choose to share your data, by another
researcher?).
Good questions to ask yourself include:

What will I use this for? Is there any additional information I need to record to
ensure I can do this?
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Research Information Management: Organising Humanities Material

What do I need to do (and what information do I need to record) to ensure I can
retrieve this when I want it?

When I have retrieved it, will it be plain what the source of this information was?

If I return to this information in six months or a year’s time, will it still be clear what it
is and what it means?

Have I edited or otherwise modified information I got from another source? If so, is
there a clear record of what I’ve done?

If I take a break in the middle of working on something (perhaps for a holiday,
because of illness, or because other work temporarily becomes more pressing), will
it be clear what I’ve done and how I should continue when I return to it?

If I want to share this information in the future, either informally with a colleague or
more formally through an archive, will other researchers be able to make sense of
it?

Does my funding body impose any requirements about sharing my data at the end
of my project?
Some extra work now may well save a lot of time – and prevent a lot of hassle – in the future.
For bigger projects, you may need to have a formal data management plan before you begin
work – some funding bodies are starting to require these as part of the application procedure.
You can find out more about this on the University of Oxford’s Research Data Management
website: http://www.admin.ox.ac.uk/rdm/
2.5. Be Realistic
It’s an unfortunate fact that there’s often a correlation between the amount of work involved
in setting up and maintaining a system and the benefit you get from it. The aim is to find the
best trade-off between the two – to determine what you want to get out of a system, and then
work out how to get it with as little effort as possible.
If a system is too complicated or requires more time and effort than you can devote to it, the
chances are that you’ll develop a backlog of unfiled items. It’s much better to have a simpler
system that works than a complex one that you can never quite keep up with.
Sometimes making use of loose categories can be a useful technique – have easily
accessible trays or folders into which you can throw all the material that relates to a particular
topic, or a particular project, or a particular area of your life (financial paperwork, for
example). What’s in the folder may not be neatly ordered or carefully catalogued, but you’ll
know where to look when you need something, and the volume of material you have to go
through won’t be too large. In some cases, you’ll want to go through what’s in the file from
time to time and sort it properly; in others, a space for everything that fits into that loose
category may be all that you need.
Something else worth considering is a ‘holding pen’ – a tray or box on your desk (or a folder
on your computer for electronic material) where you deposit the incoming material that you
don’t have time to deal with immediately. However, this technique only works if you regularly
set aside time to go through what’s in it – otherwise you’re likely to end up with a towering
stack of assorted clutter!
Sometimes it’s necessary to tackle the problem at the other end – rather than concentrating
on what you do with material once you’ve acquired it, look at where it all comes from in the
first place. If you’re finding it hard to keep on top of things, consider whether there’s anything
you can reduce the flow of information that comes your way. Mailing lists or RSS feeds can
be a big culprit here: if you’re subscribed to a number of these, do you actually have time to
read them all? When you do find the time, is what you get from them actually worth it? Some
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Research Information Management: Organising Humanities Material
lists are valuable information sources, but if you find there’s a high noise-to-signal ratio,
clicking ‘unsubscribe’ may make life easier. A compromise position is to filter mailing list
emails into their own folder, where you can look at them if you choose, but they don’t clog up
your inbox.
2.6. Finding the Time
For busy academics, information management can feel like just one more chore to fit into an
already packed schedule. Common reasons for avoiding it include:

There just aren’t enough hours in the day – and there’s always something more
urgent that needs doing first

It doesn’t feel like real research

It’s dull!
Part of the solution here is a shift in attitude: accepting that while information management
isn’t the most exciting part of the research process, it is an important precursor to working
efficiently. While it does take some time, in the long run it should prove to be a good
investment.
It’s also the sort of job that can fit into those awkward slices of time between other
commitments that aren’t really long enough to get down to some proper work in – or for those
days when you’re feeling tired or run down, and don’t have the brainpower for serious
research, but still want to achieve something useful.
If you’re someone who enjoys adventure games, you might find the Chore Wars website –
http://www.chorewars.com/ – a useful aid: it allows you to treat mundane chores as if they
were tasks in an RPG: you can claim experience points, accumulate gold, and compete
against other people.
2.7. So What’s the Point of it All?
We’ve already established that research information management has one overall goal: to
make the research process easier and more efficient. We can break this down into several
sub-goals.
A key aim is aiding retrieval – make sure that you can find things when you want them. There
are two main types of search you may want to carry out:

For a specific item or piece of information

For all the information you have on a particular topic
A longer term aim, as was noted above, is ensuring that information remains accessible and
useful in the future. This is a particular concern in the humanities: humanities material
doesn’t tend to go out of date in the way that scientific data does: the information you gather
now may well still be just as useful in ten, twenty, or fifty years time.
But while retrieval – now and in the future – is important, if you set up a filing system with this
as the sole consideration, you may find that it neglects important aspects of the way you
work on a day-to-day basis.
Other important functions of an organisational system include:

Reminding – items may be left in a conspicuous place as a reminder that
something needs to be done about them, or the list of sub-folders for a project may
function as a task list.

Representing – the way in which information is organised may reflect the structure
of that information.
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Research Information Management: Organising Humanities Material

Connecting – grouping similar items together may highlight links between items that
hadn’t been previously spotted.
Different systems of organisation will meet these aims to different extents, or in different
ways (more about that in the following sections) – so you need to decide what’s most
important to you, and plan accordingly.
2.8. Retrieval Methods
There are two main techniques used to find things within an organisational system

Location-based finding – this consists of looking in the folder you think most likely to
contain the item you’re after, then the next most likely, and so on until you find it

Using a search function

This is chiefly applicable to electronic materials, though an analogous process for
paper materials might be looking something up in an index that tells you where to
find it
Although we’re used to searching for material online, or perhaps to find a particular piece of
information within an electronic text or database, when it comes to finding things in our
personal filing systems, studies suggest that most of us tend to default to the location-based
method most of the time – in fact, we often view searching as a last resort. However, now
that so much material is available electronically, this may not be the most efficient way to
operate.
Some experts – notably Douglas C. Merrill, the author of Getting Organized in the Google
Era (Broadway Books, 2010) – have suggested that in today’s world, where we can easily
find ourselves overwhelmed with information, searching should be our method of choice, and
that we should build our organisational systems with this in mind. Filing material in carefully
categorised folders so that it’s easy to find via the location-based method can be time
consuming and hard work; just adding the keywords needed to find it via a search may often
by quicker and easier. Some possible ways of doing this are covered in later sections.
Merrill suggests that we’d also benefit from brushing up on our search techniques – for
example, using how to use Boolean search operators (and, or, and not) to best effect will
help to locate what we’re looking for quickly and easily.
However, before we write off organisational systems designed with location-based finding in
mind completely, we should note that although the sort of system Merrill advocates may be
efficient in terms of information retrieval, it doesn’t score quite so well in terms of some of the
other functions of an organisational system. In particular, it may be harder to use items as
reminders, and the structure of the information may not be represented as clearly. Once
again, it’s important to consider what’s most important to you and choose your system
accordingly.
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Research Information Management: Organising Humanities Material
Exercise 1
Small group discussion 1
 In small groups, discuss the questions below. If you wish, use the space
provided to jot down your answers
 Be ready to feed back to the whole group at the end of the discussion
Task 1
 What sort of material do you work with? What proportion is electronic, and what
proportion is paper?
Task 2
 What are the biggest challenges you face in keeping your research material
organised?
o
Are there some challenges you’ve found a way of dealing with? How did
you do this?
o
Are there problems you’re still looking for an answer to?
Task 3
 What tricks or techniques have you personally found useful?
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Research Information Management: Organising Humanities Material
3 Organising Paper Material
3.1. Identifying Your Working Style
Are you a vertical or a horizontal organiser?
These terms were coined by the American philosopher John Perry, in an essay titled ‘A Plea
for the Horizontally Organized’ – available from his website, Structured Procrastination:
http://www.structuredprocrastination.com/light/organization.php. If you read the essay (which
is well worth doing: it’s short and entertaining), it will quickly become apparent that it offers a
rather light-hearted take on the topic of information management, but underneath the humour
is a serious point.
Perry suggests that people can be divided into the vertically and the horizontally organised.
Vertical organisers like to keep everything neatly filed away – they typically make extensive
use of filing cabinets. They tend to work on one task at a time, and to have only the materials
relevant to that task in front of them. For a vertical filer, a clear desk is an aid to productivity.
Horizontal organisers, on the other hand, like to have lots of material spread out in front of
them so it’s readily available, and consequently, their work environments tend to look
cluttered. But as long as it doesn’t get out of hand, this clutter isn’t a bar to work for
horizontal organisers: in fact, it helps them to keep track of where they are with various
projects, reminds them of tasks that need doing, and if they take a break in the middle of a
task, helps them to pick up where they left off.
The phrase ‘as long as it doesn’t get out of hand’ in the previous sentence is a crucial one,
and this is where many horizontal organisers run into difficulties. Perry argues that work
spaces tend to be set up in a way that works for vertical organisers, but not for horizontal
organisers, and that this puts horizontal organisers at a serious disadvantage. In particular,
with limited work space, papers tend to pile up on top of each other. This makes things
harder to find, and reduces the proportion of visible material – which results in horizontal
organisers appearing, and sometimes being, disorganised.
It’s noticeable that a number of the supposed ideals of information management – having
everything tidily filed away out of sight, and keeping a clear work space, for example – are in
fact ideals of vertical organisation. For horizontal organisers, aiming for these things may not
in fact be particularly helpful. If you’re naturally inclined towards horizontal organisation, the
trick is not to try to turn yourself into a vertical organiser, but to think about how to make
horizontal organisation work for you.
3.2. Tips for Horizontal Organisers

Think about how you can maximise the working space you have available to you –
are there things that currently live on your desk which could be moved elsewhere?

Try creating different zones on your desk where you can park the materials relevant
to a particular task when you’re not using them – so they’re still visible and within
arm’s reach, but you don’t end up with a disordered heap piling up in front of you.

Stacking paper trays can be a great help here – they increase the space available,
it takes only a moment to push a pile of papers into one, and they help keep things
tidy.

Keep the quantity of information on your desk at any one time manageable – try to
get into the habit of having regular culls of what’s stored there. The aim isn’t to get
rid of everything, but simply to put away (or if it’s no longer useful, throw away)
anything that’s not relevant to a project you’re currently working on. Otherwise it’s
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Research Information Management: Organising Humanities Material
easy to build up a fossilised layer of older material underneath the things you’re
currently using – and this just gets in the way.

Similarly, it’s worth reassessing your zones from time to time, to ensure they’re still
relevant to what you’re working on at the moment.

If you rely on physical documents to remind you of tasks you need to complete
(forms that need to be filled in, letters to be answered, papers to be read),
experiment with other forms of reminder.

Try making a to-do list and putting this somewhere prominent. You can do this on
paper, or alternatively there are many electronic to-do list managers – which can be
set up to send you a reminder when a task is due.

Some people find a large pin board above the desk helpful: tacking items to this
gets them off your desk, and they’re less likely to get covered up by other papers.
Regular culls are important here too, though.
3.3. Tips for Vertical Organisers

It’s worth investing a little time in making the process of filing things away (and
finding them again) as quick and easy for yourself as possible. Large, clear labels
or colour coding can help you find the right file fast.

Distinguish short-term information (for example, notices about upcoming lectures)
from that which will be useful in the longer term. If you efficiently file everything
away, it’s easy to end up with a lot of space being taken up by out-of-date and
irrelevant information.

Consider reserving a space for information with a limited shelf-life, which you can
cull regularly. Stacking file trays may be a useful aid here.

If you do find you’re not keeping on top of the filing, don’t panic! You may, however,
want to see if there are ways of streamlining your filing system – you may simply be
imposing unrealistic expectations on yourself.
3.4. General Tips

Whether you’re a horizontal organiser, a vertical one, or somewhere between the
two, it’s worth giving some careful thought to the way your work space is laid out.
Are the things you use most often close at hand? If you have some storage space
that’s inconveniently placed (at the other side of the room, or tucked away in an
awkward corner, perhaps), can you use this for archiving material that you don’t
need to reference regularly?

A small thing that can make an enormous difference is ensuring that you have a
recycling bin within arm’s reach. The less effort it takes to throw something away,
the more likely you are to do so immediately.

Try to be disciplined about getting rid of what’s no longer useful. (If you’re
sentimental and want to preserve a record of the time spent working on your
research project, be selective – you don’t need to keep everything.)

In some cases, work space clutter accumulates because you have things that don’t
fit anywhere in your organisational system: you can’t put them away, because they
don’t live anywhere. If that’s the case, creating a home for them is a priority – even
if it’s just a file or a box labelled ‘Miscellaneous’.
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Research Information Management: Organising Humanities Material
Exercise 2
Self assessment questionnaire
 Are you a vertical or horizontal organiser?
Task 1
Consider each pair of statements, and circle the score that best represents your view,
where 1 is strong agreement with the left-hand statement, and 5 is strong agreement with
the right-hand statement.
I like having lots of material at
my fingertips
1
2
3
4
5
I like to have a clear desk
If I stop work before I’ve finished
a task, I’ll leave things where
they are so it’s easy to pick up
again
1
2
3
4
5
If I stop work before I’ve finished
a task, I’ll put everything away
so I know where to find it next
time
I tend to multi-task or shift
rapidly between projects
1
2
3
4
5
I tend to focus on one thing at a
time
Clutter doesn’t bother me
1
2
3
4
5
I don’t like working in a cluttered
environment
Other people often regard my
working style as chaotic
1
2
3
4
5
Other people often regard my
working style as organised
Task 2
Consider each statement, and circle the score that best represents your view, where 1 is
strongly agree, and 5 is strongly disagree.
I use documents (e.g. letters or photocopied papers) as physical
reminders of tasks I need to complete
1
2
3
4
5
If I file a document away, there’s a good chance I’ll forget about it
1
2
3
4
5
Putting things away when I know I’ll need them again feels like a
waste of time
1
2
3
4
5
Task 3
Add up your score.
If you scored 18 or below, you are predominantly a horizontal organiser
If you scored between 19 and 29, you fall somewhere between the two
If you scored 30 or above, you are predominantly a vertical organiser
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Research Information Management: Organising Humanities Material
4 Organising Electronic Material
This section covers two types of organisational system, and looks at some of their pros and
cons. They aren’t the only types of system that exist, but they are two of the most commonly
used.
4.1. Hierarchical Organisation
A hierarchical organisational system arranges files into folders and sub-folders. A
hierarchical system may have many top-level folders and comparatively few sub-folders (a
broad structure), or it may have relatively few top-level folders and a complex system of
nested sub-folders (a deep structure), or it may be somewhere between the two.
Windows and Mac OS both organise files hierarchically, so this is a familiar system to most
people. In addition to familiarity this system has a number of advantages

The structure of the folder hierarchy can be used to represent the structure of the
information contained in it

Some people find that the process of constructing the hierarchy helps to clarify
what the key topics are, and how they relate to each other

Similar items are grouped together
o
This can help to highlight connections between items
o
When looking for one item, you may also come across other useful material
you’d forgotten you had

Sub-folders within a project can function as a task list, so the structure can also
play a reminding role

Hierarchical systems work well for those who prefer location-based finding
However, there are some downsides:

Maintaining a system of this sort can prove to be surprisingly hard work – or in the
words of one information management study, ‘Creating a hierarchy and classifying
information accordingly is a heavyweight cognitive activity’1

It can be hard to get the balance right between breadth and depth

o
If a system is too simple, it will be hard to find things, as each folder may
contain many files
o
But if a system is too complex, it may be even harder to find things as there
are more places to look, and the system will also be time-consuming to
maintain
Items can only go in one place in the hierarchy, which often proves a nuisance
when material falls into a range of overlapping categories
o

It is possible to work around this problem by duplicating files, but this is timeconsuming and fiddly, and can lead to problems if one copy of a file is later
changed but not the other
As projects develop, the hierarchy may become out of date
Indratmo, J., and Julita Vassileva. “A Review of Organizational Structures of Personal Information
Management.” Journal of Digital Information 9, no. 1 (May 19, 2008), p. 3.
http://journals.tdl.org/jodi/article/viewArticle/251
1
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Research Information Management: Organising Humanities Material
o
It is possible to rearrange things, but this can be a lot of work
4.2. Tag-based Organisation
In a tag-based system, rather than being put into folders, items are assigned one or more
tags or labels. (In some systems these may have another name such as ‘keywords’, but
serve essentially the same purpose.)
Items are located by viewing a list of everything with a particular tag or combination of tags.
In some systems, it’s possible to combine browsing by tags with a search for other variables
– so that one could, for example, find everything with a particular subject tag which is also by
one specific author.
Significant advantages of this sort of system include:

Each item can be in multiple categories. Categories can overlap without this
causing problems
o
Moreover, multiple types of category can be used. In addition to tagging with
subject keywords, it’s possible to add tags indicating whether an item is read
or unread, or which project(s) it relates to

Many people find tagging quicker and easier than hierarchical filing

If you’re collaborating and want to share materials with other researchers, tagbased systems can be easier to combine than hierarchical ones
But there are also some drawbacks:

As this isn’t how operating systems typically store files, you can’t just save files to
your hard drive in the ordinary way – more creativity is required

If material isn’t adequately tagged when it’s first acquired, it may be hard to locate
later

If a complex system of tags is used, this may not be significantly less work than
maintaining a hierarchical system

If tags are entered manually rather than selected from a list, there’s a risk of
inconsistent tagging
o

Distinct categories with similar names can easily become mixed
o


For example, some files might be labelled ‘badger’ and others ‘badgers’ –
searching for one won’t necessarily find the other
This can be remedied by careful tagging, but this may be time consuming
Tag-based systems lack some of the advantages of hierarchical systems
o
The structure of the system may not represent the structure of the information
(in particular, relationships between concepts) as effectively
o
Because categories often overlap, location-based finding takes longer and is
less efficient – if you hunt for a file by looking at everything with the most
likely tag, then the second most likely, and so on, you may find yourself
encountering the same files multiple times
However, tag-based systems do tend to be set up for fast and easy searching
4.3. Managing a Hierarchical System in Windows
Windows allows you to perform many common file management operations (such as
renaming or moving files) in any file dialog window – the ones that you use to open or save a
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Research Information Management: Organising Humanities Material
file, for example. However, when performing more substantial file management tasks, it’s
often better to use the in-built Windows file management application, Windows Explorer.
To open Windows Explorer in Windows XP, click the Start button on the T as k Bar , and
hover the mouse pointer over Al l Pr o gra ms . Windows Explorer is usually located in the
program group called Ac c es s or i es .
The Windows Explorer window has two main areas: a left-hand pane which displays a list of
drives, folders, and files, and a right-hand pane which displays the contents of whatever is
currently selected in the left-hand pane. You can move between items by clicking on them in
the left-hand pane. Files and folders in the right-hand pane can be selected by clicking once,
or opened by double-clicking.
Immediately to the left of some drives and folders listed in the left-hand pane, you’ll see a
small plus sign:
. This indicates that the drive or folder contains sub-folders: click on the
plus sign to view them. When you do this, the plus sign will become a minus sign:
– click
on this to collapse the list of folders again.
Windows Explorer can be used to move files around between folders. The easiest way to do
this is to drag-and-drop: left-click on the file or folder you want to move, and then holding the
button down, drag it to the new location, and release the mouse button. You can drag items
from the right-hand pane into a folder in the left-hand pane, and vice versa.
Right-clicking on a file or folder brings up a pop-up menu offering options including cut, copy,
paste, rename, and delete, plus the option to view the item’s properties.
4.4. Tips for Making a Hierarchical System Work
This section outlines some ways of making a hierarchical system work to best effect. In some
cases, these techniques may help to overcome some of the disadvantages listed in Section
4.1 above.

When planning your folder structure, try to avoid overlapping categories as far as is
reasonably possible.
o

In particular, when source materials are relevant (or potentially relevant) to
multiple projects, consider storing the source materials separately, rather than
in a project folder.

For example, a collection of journal articles may have initially been
gathered as material for a thesis chapter, but might subsequently also
be useful for a conference paper or journal article.

Links between the source materials and the project-related documents
can be created in other ways – some suggestions are given below.
Try to strike a balance between breadth and depth in your folder structure.
o
When a list of files becomes unwieldy, consider creating one or more
subcategories (a good rule of thumb is that you shouldn’t find yourself
frequently having to scroll in file dialog boxes).
o
However, be wary of having too many levels of files nested within each other,
or accessing those in the deepest levels will quickly become tedious.
Creating Archive Folders
If a folder contains a significant amount of material that you no longer regularly use, consider
creating an archive sub-folder to store it.

Using Windows Explorer (as described in Section 4.3 above), navigate to the
folder you wish to tidy up.
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Research Information Management: Organising Humanities Material

Click Fi l e | N e w | F ol d er to create a new folder, and give it a suitable name
(Archive is one option: another alternative is Zzzz, which indicates that the
projects are sleeping, and has the advantage of tucking the folder away at the
bottom of the alphabetical list).

Drag and drop the files and folders no longer in regular use into the archive folder.

Your folder contents are now tidier and thus easier to navigate, but the older
material is still readily available if you should need it.
Access Files from Multiple Places Using Shortcuts
A shortcut is an icon which allows you to open a file from a location other than the place the
file itself is stored. If you delete a shortcut, the original file is not affected.

To create a shortcut, right-click on a file icon, then select Cr e at e S h ortc u t from the
pop-up menu which appears. The shortcut will be created in the same location as
the original file, and you can now move it to wherever you choose.

An alternative method of creating shortcuts is described in Exercise 5 below.

Shortcuts can be used to circumvent the problem of only being able to put an item
in one place in a hierarchical file structure – save the item in one branch of the
hierarchy, and create a shortcut to it from another.

You can also use shortcuts to save time when accessing frequently used items. If a
file or folder in regular use is buried deep in the hierarchy, consider creating a
shortcut to it on the desktop or at the top level of your file structure.

Review your shortcuts regularly: remove those for projects which are now
complete, and add new ones for things you’re currently working on.

A third use for shortcuts is to create project folders. The source materials for a
particular project may be scattered around your folder hierarchy – perhaps some
are PDF files, others are images, and still others are word processing documents. A
project folder containing shortcuts to the relevant files provides an easy means of
accessing all the material, without disrupting your file structure.
Select File Names Carefully
By default, Windows orders the list of files within a folder alphabetically. It is also possible to
sort files by date, but sometimes neither of these gives an order that makes sense for a
particular collection of documents.
The trick is to think carefully about what comes at the beginning of the file name, so that
similar items are grouped together.

For example, suppose you have a folder which contains PDFs of journal articles,
and Word files containing your notes on those articles.

If you give the PDFs file names which have the format Author, Date, and the
notes files names with Notes on Author, Date, you’ll end up with all the notes
files grouped together, in the middle of the authors whose names begin with N.

On the other hand, if you give the notes files names with the format Author, Date
- notes, each notes file will appear immediately after the PDF to which it relates.
In some cases, however, you need to do more than this to force the files into an order that
makes sense. Consider this list of files, for example:
B u t te r fl y . d oc
C a t er pi l l ar . doc
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Research Information Management: Organising Humanities Material
C hr y s al i s .d oc
E g g . doc
These files fall into a clear chronological sequence, but this isn’t reflected in the alphabetical
ordering. One option here is to add numbers to the beginning of file names to force them into
a logical order:
0 1 E gg . doc
0 2 Ca te r pi ll ar . doc
0 3 Chr y s al i s .d oc
0 4 B ut te r fl y . do c
In other cases, the order of the whole body of files is less important, but there are perhaps
one or two important files it would be nice to have at the top of the list – or a small number of
files which fall into a different category from the rest, but which don’t merit their own folder.
Consider this list of files of student information, for example:
Al i c e . do c
E d w ar d. d oc
E n d of t er m r e p or ts . doc
R u t h. d oc
Ti m o thy . do c
The reports file is currently stranded in the middle of the list. This can be remedied by adding
an underscore ( _ ) to the beginning of the file name:
_ E n d o f ter m r ep or ts . do c
Al i c e . do c
E d w ar d. d oc
R u t h. d oc
Ti m o thy . do c
This will push it to the top of the alphabetical list.
Adding Searchable Keywords to Files
In addition to browsing through the file structure, files can also be found using the Windows
search utility. To use this, click the Start button on the Tas k B ar at the bottom of the
screen, then click
The search dialog gives the option of searching all or part of a file name, or for words or
phrases within a file. However, there may be occasions when a key term isn’t included
anywhere within the text or name of a file. Imagine, for example, that you have an image file
of the Mona Lisa, titled (sensibly enough) M o n a Li s a.j pg . If you search for ‘painting’, you
won’t get this in your results.
One option is to change the file name, but including all relevant search terms would lead to
some very cumbersome names. A better options is to add keywords to the file’s properties.
Every file has a set of properties – information that Windows stores about the file itself, rather
than about its contents. These include its size, format, and when it was created. Much of the
information is generated automatically, but there are also some fields which can be edited
manually.
To view a file’s properties, right-click on its icon in any file dialog box, then select Pr op er ti es
from the pop-up menu. To add keywords, click on the S u m ma ry tag, enter the words of your
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Research Information Management: Organising Humanities Material
choice in the K ey w or ds box, then click O K . The file will now appear in the results of a
search for files including that word. (Note, though, that the file may not be listed if it’s open
when you run the search.)
In theory, this technique could be used to build a tag-based organisational system within
Windows. In practice, however, the process of adding keywords is probably too time
consuming (and the search function too slow) to make this worthwhile, so it’s best reserved
for occasional cases where additional keywords are useful. Those seeking a tag-based
system are better off using software designed with this in mind – which is the subject of the
next section.
If you’re a frequent user of the search function, it may be worth downloading a desktop
search application – these index the contents of your computer to speed up the search
process, and search your emails and Web browser history in addition to the files and folders
on your hard drive. (However, while it makes searching faster, some people find that running
a program which indexes everything can impair the overall performance of their computer.)
Popular desktop search utilities include:

Windows Search 4.0:
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/products/winfamily/desktopsearch/

Google Desktop: http://desktop.google.com/
4.5. Tools for Creating a Tag-Based System
At present, there is no widely-used tag-based general file storage system. However, a
number of tools exist which will allow you to add tags to the files stored on your hard drive.
These include:
Tabbles: the word ‘tabble’ is a combination of ‘tag’ and ‘bubble’, and the program allows you
to create ‘tag-bubbles’ or ‘tabbles’, and use these to organise your documents. A tabble is a
virtual folder, or a collection of files with a particular tag: your files stay wherever you saved
them, but can also be accessed via any tabbles you place them in. The basic version of
Tabbles can be downloaded free of charge; premium versions which offer more features are
available on payment of a fee. See http://tabbles.net/ for more information.
TaggedFrog: another free file tagging application for Windows. The interface is fairly
straightforward, though it’s worth reading the Quick Start guide to pick up some tips about
how to use the program to best effect. See http://lunarfrog.com/ for further information.
TaggTool allows you to tag both files and websites, and offers a handy desktop search box
to aid swift retrieval. It offers more features than TaggedFrog, but does cost about £10
(although a free trial version is available). See http://www.taggtool.com/ for further
information.
There are also a number of applications for storing specific types of information which make
use of tags rather than hierarchical folders, some of which can easily be adapted for more
general use.
Bibliographic Software
Many researchers use bibliographic software primarily for citation management – to create
footnotes, endnotes, and bibliographies in their written work. However, its usefulness
extends far beyond generating references.
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Research Information Management: Organising Humanities Material
A number of major bibliographic software applications allow you to organise your references
(and attached files) using tags. They will allow you to attach files to a record, so in addition to
recording the bibliographic details of (for example) a journal article, you can also include a
PDF of the article itself, and/or a Word file containing your notes – or better still, you can
type (or copy and paste) directly into the software’s own notes field, which makes your notes
searchable. (And although the software is designed to handle bibliographic material, there’s
actually nothing to stop you attaching other types of file to records: spreadsheets or images,
perhaps. Instead of bibliographic information, you can fill in the record with a brief description
of the file – whatever information you need to be able to find it again.)
This means you can use bibliographic software to create a searchable, tag-based library of
your source materials and notes. Popular packages include:
EndNote: a high-performance commercial software package. It’s not cheap, although some
institutions are able to make the software available to their members at a substantially
discounted rate. See http://www.endnote.com/ (or consult your institution’s IT team) for
further information.
RefWorks: a Web-based reference manager. It is available via individual or institutional
subscription: if your institution subscribes, you may be able to use the service free of charge.
Information for members of Oxford University is available at
http://www.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/eresources/refworks; other users should see
http://www.refworks.com/ for more details. (Note that although RefWorks calls its basic
organisational unit a folder, the folders are non-hierarchical and items can be in multiple
folders – in other words, the folders function much like tags in other systems.)
Mendeley: a free downloadable reference manager which offers some handy additional
features, such as automatic indexing of PDFs, automatic renaming for downloaded PDFs,
and a flag on each record to indicate whether it’s read or unread. More information is
available from http://www.mendeley.com/
Image Management Packages
If you have a large collection of images you need to store and organise, several tag-based
image management applications are available. These include:
Flickr: this is probably best known as a photo sharing website, but in fact you can also
upload images that aren’t photos, and customisable privacy settings mean you don’t have to
share if you choose not to! You can use Flickr to annotate sections of images or to geotag
them. A basic Flickr account (which allows you to upload 300MB of images every calendar
month) is available free of charge; paid accounts are available for heavier users. More
information is available from http://www.flickr.com/
Picasa: a free downloadable image organiser from Google. More information is available
from http://picasa.google.com/
Gmail
Gmail is Google’s email service. It offers a generous amount of storage – currently over 7GB
– and unlike most email services, allows users to organise messages using labels (tags)
rather than folders.
The combination of these two features means that even though it’s not what the service is
primarily designed for, it is possible to use Gmail as an online tag-based file storage system,
by attaching files to messages and either saving them as drafts or emailing them to yourself.
You can sign up for a free Gmail account at http://mail.google.com/
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Research Information Management: Organising Humanities Material
4.6. Tips for Managing a Tag-Based File Storage System in Gmail
While most people find Gmail an easy and intuitive system to use, there are a few features
it’s worth being aware of.

The first thing to note is that Gmail arranges messages into threads or
conversations: a message and any replies to it are displayed together (unless the
subject line is changed, in which case a new thread begins).
o
This means that if you email yourself a file as an attachment, then later create
a reply to that message to which you add notes or a related file, the two
messages will appear together.

To add a label to a message, either click the check box at the left-hand end of the
message description (when it appears in a list of messages, such as the inbox or a
set of search results) or open it. Then click the La b el s menu in the bar near the top
of the screen, and select the label of your choice, or create a new one.

A list of existing labels appears in the left-hand sidebar. Clicking on a label in this
list displays all messages with that label.

The A r c hi v e button, in the bar near the top of the screen, removes a message from
the Inbox. To view archived messages, click Al l M ai l in the list of labels.

You can set up custom filters to automatically add labels to messages that contain
specific keywords or come from particular addresses as they arrive. To do this, click
the C r e a te a fil t er link, which is near the top of the screen, to the right of the
search buttons.
o


If you regularly use online bibliographic databases and email your search
results to yourself, you can set up a filter to add a label to these messages
flagging them as references.
In addition to labels, Gmail features a powerful search function. It’s worth taking a
little time to learn some of the search operators (words which perform a special
function in a Gmail search), as these will make your searches more precise, and
allow you to do more.
o
For example, to find all the messages which have both the label ‘squirrels’
and the label ‘images’, type label:squirrels AND label:images (with no
spaces after the colons) in the search box near the top of the page, and then
click Search Mail .
o
If a label name has multiple words, join these with a hyphen – so to search for
everything with the label ‘to read’, type label:to-read
o
You can search for attachments by file name or file type.
o
To find a file called ‘Lecture notes’, search for filename:lecture-notes.
o
To find all PDF files, search for filename:pdf
o
To limit your search to files with an attachment without specifying a file name,
include has:attachment in your search terms
A full list of Gmail search operators is available from
http://mail.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=7190
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Research Information Management: Organising Humanities Material
Exercise 3
Compare and contrast – hierarchical and tag-based
2
organisation
 In pairs or small groups, consider how you might organise the same set of
files in a hierarchical system and in a tag-based one
 Consider the advantages and disadvantages of the two systems
Note: This and several subsequent exercises make use of the exercise files provided to
accompany this course book.
 If you are completing this exercise as part of a taught course, your course teacher
will be able to tell you where to find the files.
 If you are working independently, you may need to download the exercise files
yourself and save them in a convenient place on your computer.
Task 1
Explore the Ex er c i s e 3
folder using Windows
Explorer
Step 1
Open Windows Explorer.
In Windows XP, this is usually done by clicking the
S t ar t button on the T a s k B a r at the bottom of the
screen, then selecting A l l P r o gra ms | A c c es s ori es |
Wi n d ows Ex pl ore r
Step 2
Using the list of drives and folders in the left-hand pane,
navigate to the E x e rc i s e 3 folder. (If the contents of a
drive or folder aren’t visible in this pane, you can reveal
them by clicking the plus sign
next to it.)
Step 3
You can open a folder by clicking its name in the lefthand list, or double clicking it in the right-hand pane.
Open the folder E x e rc i s e 3
Step 4
Spend a few minutes exploring the folder to familiarise
yourself with its contents.
Task 2
In pairs or small groups,
discuss how you might
organise the folder’s
contents hierarchically, and
how you might organise
them using a tag-based
system
Step 1
Consider what sort of groups the files in the E x erc i s e
3 folder fall into. How would you organise them to
enable easy retrieval of the material?
If you were organising these files into a hierarchical
folder structure, what folders and sub-folders would you
create?
If you were organising these files using tags, what tags
would you use?
2
Note for course leaders: in Exercise 3 of the original course, participants were provided with a set of files
that had already been organised hierarchically, and were also given the login details for a Gmail account
containing the same set of files organised using tags. They were then invited to perform some file
management tasks (including deciding where to place unfiled items, and finding pre-filed items). This allowed
for a more thorough comparison of the two systems, but involved a considerable amount of work to set up, as
each Gmail account had to be created, populated, and tagged individually.
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Research Information Management: Organising Humanities Material
Step 2
If time permits, use Windows Explorer to create some
folders and organise the files. (Note: Section 4.3 above
includes some tips for using Windows Explorer.)
You could also try creating a Gmail account or
downloading an application such as Tabbles (see
Section 4.5 above), and use this to organise the files
using tags.
Task 3
Consider how you might
perform some or all of
these tasks within the two
different systems – and
how easy you’d expect it to
be
Step 1
 Construct a ‘to read’ list
 File an item which covers two or more distinct
topics
 Find all the images in your collection
 Find everything by the author ‘Smith’
 Produce a list of files relating to British wildlife
Task 4
Reflect on your experiences, and be ready to share your thoughts about the two
types of system in the next exercise. Questions you may wish to consider include:
 Which system did you find easiest to work with?
 Did any files or groups of files prove particularly problematic?
 What benefits or difficulties could you envisage if you continued working with the
two systems?
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Research Information Management: Organising Humanities Material
Exercise 4
Small group discussion 2
 In small groups, discuss the questions below. If you wish, use the space
provided to jot down your answers
 Be ready to feed back to the whole group at the end of the discussion
Task 1
 What sort of structure(s) do you currently use to organise your research material –
hierarchical, tag-based, or a mixture of both?
 Are there types of structure you’ve used or encountered which don’t fit into either of
these categories? How would you describe them?
Task 2
Based on your past experience and/or on today’s exercise, what do you see as being
the major advantages and disadvantages of the different types of system?
Task 3
Are there specific types of information (or types of project) for which one type of
system seems to you particularly suitable?
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Research Information Management: Organising Humanities Material
Exercise 5
Creating a project folder using shortcuts
 Create a project folder
 Identify relevant files
 Create shortcuts to these files in the project folder
Task 1
Use Windows Explorer to
open the Ex er c i s e 5 folder
Step 1
If it’s not already open, launch Windows Explorer: in
Windows XP, this is usually done by clicking the S t a r t
button on the T a s k B ar at the bottom of the screen,
then selecting A l l Pro gr am s | A c c es s o ri es |
Wi n d ows Ex pl ore r
Open the folder E x e rc i s e 5
Task 2
Create a project folder
Step 1
Using the menu bar at the top of the window, select
Fi l e | N e w | F ol d er to create a new subfolder
Step 2
The default folder name (N e w F ol d er ) should be
highlighted: type Squirrel project over this to
rename the folder. (If the filename is not highlighted, you
can right-click on it, and then select R e n a m e from the
pop-up menu.)
Task 3
Locate project files, and
create shortcuts
Step 1
Click on the I m a g es folder in the left-hand pane to
display its contents. The S q ui rr el p roj ec t folder
should be visible in the folder list in the left-hand pane
Step 2
Right-click on the file R e d s qui rr el .j p g . Holding the
mouse button down, drag the file to the S q u i rr el
p r oj ec t folder in the left-hand pane. When you release
the mouse button, a pop-up menu will appear: select
C re a te S hor tc uts H er e
Step 3
Click on the N o t es folder. Click on the file S q u i rr el
l ec tu re n o te s . do c to select it. Then hold down the
SHIFT key and click on S q ui rr el l i nk s . d oc so that
both files are selected.
Right-click on one of the files, and drag both over to the
S q ui rr el p roj ec t folder. Create shortcuts as described
in Step 2
Step 4
Click on the P D Fs folder. Repeat step 3 for the files
S q ui rr el s Hi g gi ns 1 8 7 6 . p d f and S q ui rr el s
S h o rt e n 19 5 4 . p df
NB. You can also select multiple non-consecutive files
by holding down CTRL and clicking on them.
Task 4
View the finished folder
Step 1
Open the S q u i rr el p roj ec t folder to show its contents.
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Research Information Management: Organising Humanities Material
23
Research Information Management: Organising Humanities Material
Exercise 6
Forcing a file order using file names
 Reorder a set of files by adding numbers to the file names
 Make a selected file appear at the top of the list by using an underscore
Task 1
Use Windows Explorer to
open the Ex er c i s e 6 folder
Step 1
If it’s not already open, launch Windows Explorer: in
Windows XP, this is usually done by clicking the S t a r t
button on the T a s k B ar at the bottom of the screen,
then selecting A l l Pro gr am s | A c c es s o ri es |
Wi n d ows Ex pl ore r
Open the folder E x e rc i s e 6
Task 2
The folder contains a list of
files relating to a
conference paper. By
default, these are shown in
alphabetical order. Change
the order of the files by
adding numbers to the start
of the file names.
Step 1
Right-click on the file I n i ti al i d eas . do c , then select
R e n a me from the pop-up menu.
Step 2
Click immediately to the left of the first letter of the file
name to position the insertion point there. Type 01
followed by a space at the beginning of the file name,
then press ENTER or click somewhere else in the
window to complete the process. The file should now be
called 0 1 I ni ti al i d e as . do c
Step 3
To see the new ordering, click Vi e w on the menu bar at
the top of the screen, then R e fr es h . (You can also
refresh by pressing F5, or by leaving the folder and then
returning to it.)
Step 4
Another way to rename files is to click once on the file
name, wait a few seconds, and then click again: the file
name will be highlighted and you can enter the new
name (if the clicks are too close together, the system
interprets this as a double click and opens the file – if
this happens, simply close it and try again). If you want
to add something to the file name rather than replacing
it completely, click at the appropriate point in the file
name before you start typing.
Use this method to add 02 and a space to the beginning
of the file name A b s tr ac t.d oc
Step 5
Repeat the renaming process for the other files in the
folder, adding a number to each of them to put them in
an order that makes sense. Refresh the window to see
the new ordering.
Task 3
Open the sub-folder
C o n fer e nc e i n fo r m a ti on ,
Step 1
Double-click on the sub-folder C o n f er enc e
i n for m a ti on to open it.
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Research Information Management: Organising Humanities Material
and add an underscore to
one of the file names.
Step 2
Find the file F i n al c on f ere nc e p ro gr a mm e .d oc .
Using your preferred renaming method (as described
above), add an underscore at the beginning of the file
name, so that the file is now called _ Fi n al
c on f er enc e pr o gr a mme . d oc .
Step 3
Press F5 to refresh the window. _ Fi n al c o n fer e nc e
p r ogr a m me . doc now appears at the top of the list of
files.
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Research Information Management: Organising Humanities Material
Exercise 7
Adding searchable keywords to a file
 Add keywords to a file’s properties
 Find the file using the Windows search function
Task 1
Use Windows Explorer to
open the Ex er c i s e 7 folder
Step 1
If it’s not already open, launch Windows Explorer: in
Windows XP, this is usually done by clicking the S t a r t
button on the T a s k B ar at the bottom of the screen,
then selecting A l l Pro gr am s | A c c es s o ri es |
Wi n d ows Ex pl ore r
Open the folder E x e rc i s e 7
Task 2
Locate the file called
G i r a ff a
c a mel o p ar dal i s .j p g
Because the filename uses
the scientific name rather
than the common English
one, a search for giraffe
won’t currently find this
image. We can remedy this
by adding keywords to the
file’s properties
Task 3
Relocate the file using the
Windows search function
Step 1
Find the file called G i ra ff a c a m el o par d al i s .j pg , and
right-click on it
Step 2
Select P r o p er ti es from the pop-up menu
Step 3
When the P r o p er ti es dialog appears, click on the
S u m m ary tab. Type giraffe in the K e y w or ds box,
then click O K . Close Windows Explorer
Step 1
Click the S t a r t button on the T a s k B ar at the bottom
of the screen
Step 2
Click
Step 3
In the box titled A w o r d or p hr as e i n t h e fil e : , type
giraffe
You could click the S e a rc h button now, but this would
trigger a search of the whole collection of files and
folders, which would take some time to complete. It’s
quicker and more efficient to restrict your search to the
drive or folder you think the file you’re seeking is in.
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Research Information Management: Organising Humanities Material
Step 4
Click the down arrow at the right hand side of the L o o k
i n : box
Select B r o ws e. . . from the bottom of the drop-down list.
Step 5
When the B r o ws e F or Fol d er dialog appears, locate
the E x e rc i s e 7 folder (you may need to click on the
plus signs
next to directory or folder names to reveal
their contents). Click on it to highlight it, and then click
OK
Step 6
Now click S ea rc h .
G i ra ff a c a m el o p ard al i s.j pg should appear in the
list of results
Note: if a file is open when a search occurs, Windows
may ignore it, and it won’t appear in the results. If this
happens, close the file and try again.
Task 4
(optional)
If you wish, spend a few minutes experimenting with the search function. You
might explore:
 How much difference is there between the time it takes to search for a filename
and the time it takes to search for a word within a file?
 How much difference does restricting the search to a particular drive or folder
make?
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Research Information Management: Organising Humanities Material
5 Linking Notes and Sources
5.1. Hyperlinks within Documents
We’re all familiar with Web hyperlinks: clickable text that can be used to open a Web page.
It’s also possible to create hyperlinks within a document which link to another file on your
computer.
This can be helpful if you have, for example, a PDF of a journal article plus some notes in a
Word document: you can add a hyperlink to the Word document which will allow you to open
the PDF with a single click.
To add a hyperlink to a Word document, select the text you’d like to turn into a link. Then
click I ns ert | Hy pe r li nk , and when the I ns e rt Hy p e rli nk dialog opens, browse through your
folders until you find the appropriate file. Click it to select it, then click OK . To follow the
hyperlink, hover the mouse pointer over the hyperlinked text (a small pop-up should show
you what the link leads to), hold down CTRL and click.
If you’re linking one Word document to another, you can use a combination of bookmarks
and hyperlinks to link to a specific point in the file – a particular passage you’re referring to,
for example. Start by adding a bookmark to the target file: position the insertion point where
you’d like it to be, and click Ins er t | B ook m ark . Give the bookmark a name, then click Add .
Now go to the file you want to add a hyperlink to: proceed as described above until you’ve
selected the file you want to link to. Before clicking O K , click the Bookmark... button, and
select the bookmark you’ve just create. Click OK twice to close the two dialog boxes, and
your hyperlink should appear.
5.2. Bibliographic Software
As was noted in Section 4.5 above, bibliographic software such as EndNote, RefWorks, or
Mendeley can be used to store notes – either in the designated notes field, or by attaching a
document. If you also attach a copy of the source material, this provides a handy way of
linking the two.
5.3. Other Software
There are a large number of software applications designed to help manage notes and
sources. These include:
OneNote
OneNote is Microsoft’s note-taking program. It allows you to create a virtual notebook –
including images, audio, and video files, as well as text, and links can be created to source
materials stored in other Microsoft applications – Word or PowerPoint, for example.
Further information is available from: http://office.microsoft.com/en-gb/onenote/
Planz
Planz is a prototype personal information management tool, developed by the Keeping
Found Things Found project at the University of Washington. It provides a straightforward
means of organising notes and sources (including files on your computer, websites, and
emails) for a project in a single integrated document.
Further information is available from: http://kftf.ischool.washington.edu/planner_index.htm
28
Research Information Management: Organising Humanities Material
NVivo
NVivo is a commercial software package for organising and analysing qualitative research
data – it offers tools for sorting, searching, and annotating material such as interview
transcripts, survey results, images, videos, and sound files.
Further information is available from: http://www.qsrinternational.com/products_nvivo.aspx
Scrivener
Scrivener is a word processing and project management tool, designed for structuring and
writing long documents. It offers tools for outlining and keeping track of progress, and a split
screen mode allows research materials to be viewed alongside the current document.
Scrivener was originally written for the Mac; a Windows version is now available for public
beta testing.
Further information is available from: http://www.literatureandlatte.com/scrivener.php
A.nnotate
A.nnotate is an online tool which allows you to upload and annotate documents (including
PDFs), Web snapshots, and images. You can organise material using folders and tags, and
text documents, tags, and your notes are indexed for easy searching.
Further information is available from: http://a.nnotate.com/
Diigo
Diigo is an online bookmarking and annotation tool. When you add a Web page to your
Diigo library, you can then highlight sections or add notes, much as you would on a printed
document. Your annotations are saved in your Diigo account, so you can access them from
any computer (or even from a mobile device).
Further information is available from: http://www.diigo.com/
5.4. Working with Images
If you’re working with a large number of images and need to store detailed information about
them, the best option is a relational database. Building this may involve extra work at the
beginning of the project, but if working with images constitutes a substantial proportion of
your research project, is likely to prove worthwhile in the long run.
FileMaker Pro is a commercial database program which is popular among those engaged in
image-heavy research. FileMaker is available for both Windows and Mac; Mac users also
have the option of using Bento, a more budget-friendly personal database package from the
same company.
Microsoft’s database package Access includes some tools for dealing with images, though it
seems less well adapted to these than to many other sorts of data.
Currently under development in Oxford is a service known as DaaS (Database as a Service).
This will provide a straightforward way of creating customised research databases to store
text, images, and GIS data. The service should become available at some point in 2011:
please email sudamih@rt.oucs.ox.ac.uk if you’d like to know more.
On the other hand, if you only need to store basic information about each image (title and a
brief description, perhaps), an image management program such as those mentioned in
Section 4.5 above may be all you need.
Or if you’re working with a small collection of images which would be unlikely to repay the
investment needed to build a proper system to store them, another option is to make use of
29
Research Information Management: Organising Humanities Material
software that you’re already using for another purpose. You can attach image files to records
in bibliographic software packages (some will display this as a thumbnail), or to create a very
basic image catalogue, you could even use a Word table. This won’t, of course, give you all
the features that a system which is custom-designed for images are, but if your needs are
fairly basic, may be enough – it’s a case of following the principles outlined in Section 2:
establish what you need the system to do, and then find the most straightforward way of
achieving this.
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Research Information Management: Organising Humanities Material
Exercise 8
Linking files using hyperlinks
 Add a hyperlink from a Word document to another file on your computer
 Use the hyperlink to open the other file
Note: The instructions given are for Microsoft Word 2007. With other versions of Word,
the steps are very similar, although buttons or commands may be organised slightly
differently – for example, you’ll need to use the I n s e r t menu rather than the I n s e r t tab.
Task 1
Open Microsoft Word, then
the document No t es . d oc
Step 1
In Windows XP, Word can usually be opened by
clicking the S t a r t button on the T a s k B ar at the
bottom of the screen, then selecting A l l Pr o gr am s |
Mi c r os of t O f fi c e | Mi c ro s o f t O ffi c e W or d 2 007
Step 2
Click the Office button
and then
.
When the O p e n dialog appears, find the folder
E x erc i s e s 8- 9 , then open the file N o t e s . d oc
Task 2
Insert a hyperlink to the file
Step 1
Select the word ‘statistics’ in the second paragraph.
S t a ti s ti c s .p d f
Step 2
Click the I n s ert tab at the top of the screen, then click
H y p erl i nk from the Li nk s group.
Step 3
When the I n s er t Hy p erl in k dialog appears, browse
through the list of files and folders to locate
S t a ti s ti c s .p d f , and click on it. Click O K
Step 4
The text you selected will be underlined and coloured
blue, to indicate that it’s now a hyperlink.
Task 3
Use the hyperlink to open
the file St ati s ti c s . p df
Step 1
Hover the mouse pointer over the hyperlink. Hold down
CTRL, then click the left hand mouse button.
Step 2
The file will open in another window.
Step 3
Close the file S t a ti s ti c s .pd f , but leave N o t e s . d oc
open for the next exercise.
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Research Information Management: Organising Humanities Material
Exercise 9
bookmarks
Linking to a specific place in a file using hyperlinks and
 Add a bookmark to a Word document
 Add a hyperlink to the bookmark from another file
 Use the hyperlink to open the file at the bookmark
Task 1
Open the document
Q u ot ati on s . doc
Step 1
Click the Office button
and then
.
Step 2
When the O p e n dialog appears, open the folder
E x erc i s e s 8- 9 , then the file Q u o ta ti o ns . d oc
Task 2
Add a bookmark to the
document
Step 1
Scroll down to the second page of the document. Click
immediately above the heading ‘Section 2’ to position
the insertion point.
Step 2
Click on the I n s ert tab at the top of the screen, then
click B o ok m ark from the Li nk s group.
Step 3
When the Bookmark dialog appears, type a name for
the bookmark (for example Section2) in the
B o ok m ark n a m e box. (Note that Word will not let
you use spaces in bookmark names.) Click Ad d
Step 4
Word inserts a bookmark in the document. (In the
normal view, the bookmark is not visible.)
Step 5
Close Q u o t a ti on s . d oc by clicking on the X button in
the top right hand corner of the window. When asked if
you want to save changes, click Y es
Task 3
Add a hyperlink to the
bookmark from the
document No t es . d oc
Step 1
Return to the file N o t es .do c . (If it is not already open,
use
and then
to find and open it.)
Step 2
Select the word ‘quotations’ in the third paragraph.
Step 3
Click the I n s ert tab at the top of the screen, then click
H y p erl i nk from the Li nk s group.
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Research Information Management: Organising Humanities Material
Step 4
When the Insert Hyperlink dialog appears, browse the
list of files and folders to locate Q u o t ati o ns .d oc , and
click on it.
Step 5
Click the B o o k m ark . .. button, on the right-hand side
of the dialog box.
Step 6
When the S e l ec t Pl ac e in D oc u m e nt dialog
appears, select S e c ti on 2 (or whatever name you gave
the bookmark) from the list. Click O K , then O K again.
Step 7
The text you selected will be underlined and coloured
blue, to indicate that it’s now a hyperlink.
Task 4
Open the bookmarked
document using the
hyperlink
Step 1
Hover the mouse pointer over the hyperlink. Hold down
CTRL, then click the left hand mouse button.
Step 2
The file will open at the point where the bookmark was
inserted.
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Research Information Management: Organising Humanities Material
Exercise 10
Useful tools
 A selection of software tools you may find useful is listed below
 Take a few minutes to explore any that interest you
Note: To save you from having to type each URL individually, an electronic version of
this information is available in the T ool g ui de folder.
Tabbles
TaggedFrog
Free file tagging application for Windows
Free file tagging application for Windows
http://tabbles.net/
http://lunarfrog.com/
TaggTool
EndNote
Commercial file tagging application
Commercial bibliographic software package
http://www.taggtool.com/
http://www.endnote.com/
RefWorks
Mendeley
Online reference manager – free to members of
subscribing institutions
Downloadable reference and PDF manager
http://www.mendeley.com/
http://www.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/eresources/refwor
ks
Flickr
Picasa
Online image sharing service
Downloadable free image management
package
http://www.flickr.com/
http://picasa.google.com/
Planz
OneNote
Free prototype personal information
management program
Microsoft’s note-taking program
http://office.microsoft.com/en-gb/onenote/
http://kftf.ischool.washington.edu/planner_index
.htm
Scrivener
NVivo
Software for writing and structuring long
documents
Commercial software for analysing qualitative
data
http://www.literatureandlatte.com/scrivener.php
http://www.qsrinternational.com/products_nvivo
.aspx
A.nnotate
Diigo
Upload and annotate PDFs, images, and other
files
Online bookmarking and annotation tool
http://a.nnotate.com/
34
http://www.diigo.com/
Research Information Management: Organising Humanities Material
6 Other Resources
Note: Most of these resources are only available to Oxford staff and students.
OUCS IT Learning Programme offers a wide range of training courses, many of which are
relevant to research information management. These include courses on some of the
software packages mentioned above. Please see the courses Web page for further details:
http://www.oucs.ox.ac.uk/itlp/courses/
The Research Skills Toolkit website provides information about a range of software tools,
University services, and other resources which may be useful to researchers:
http://www.skillstoolkit.ox.ac.uk/
The Oxford University Research Data Management website gives advice on data
management planning, data security, and sharing and archiving:
http://www.admin.ox.ac.uk/rdm/
InfoDev is an OUCS service offering a range of services to University research staff. They
can help with the technical aspects of research projects, from the initial planning stages
through to ensuring that data is preserved at the end of the project. More details are
available from their website: http://www.oucs.ox.ac.uk/infodev/
OUCS’s HFS Backup Service offers free secure data backup to Oxford University staff and
postgraduates: http://www.oucs.ox.ac.uk/hfs/
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Research Information Management: Organising Humanities Material
7 Appendix 1: Further Reading
Much of the information management theory mentioned in this course book is drawn from the
works listed below.
A review of this literature is available from the Sudamih Project’s website:
http://sudamih.oucs.ox.ac.uk/docs/Personal%20information%20management%20literature%
20review.pdf
Barreau, Deborah, and Bonnie A. Nardi. “Finding and Reminding: File Organization from the
Desktop.” SIGCHI Bull. 27, no. 3 (1995): 39-43.
http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=221307&dl=GUIDE&coll=GUIDE&CFID=97795080&CF
TOKEN=56870801
Civan, Andrea,William Jones, Klasnja Predrag, and Harry Bruce. “Better to Organize
Personal Information by Folders Or by Tags?: The Devil is in the Details.” 68th Annual
Meeting of the American Society for Information Science and Technology (2008).
http://kftf.ischool.washington.edu/rerecentpublicationaboutplanner/Civan%20et%20al,%2020
08,%20Better%20to%20organize%20bv%20folders%20or%20by%20tags.pdf
Fertig, Scott, Eric Freeman, and David Gelernter. “'Finding and Reminding' Reconsidered.”
SIGCHI Bull. 28, no. 1 (1996): 66-69.
http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=249187&dl=GUIDE&coll=GUIDE&CFID=97795080&CF
TOKEN=56870801
Henderson, Sarah. “Personal Document Management Strategies,” (2009).
http://sarahhenderson.info/2009/personal-document-management-strategies/
Indratmo, J., and Julita Vassileva. “A Review of Organizational Structures of Personal
Information Management.” Journal of Digital Information 9, no. 1 (May 19, 2008).
http://journals.tdl.org/jodi/article/viewArticle/251
Jones,William. “Personal Information Management.” Annual Review of Information Science
and Technology 41, no. 1 (2007): 453-504.
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/aris.2007.1440410117/full
Jones,William, Ammy Jiranida Phuwanartnurak, Rajdeep Gill, and Harry Bruce. “Don’t Take
My Folders Away! Organizing Personal Information to Get Things Done.” University of
Washington Research Works Archive (2004).
https://digital.lib.washington.edu/dspace/handle/1773/2031
Malone, Thomas W. “How Do People Organize Their Desks?: Implications for the Design of
Office Information Systems.” ACM Trans. Inf. Syst. 1, no. 1 (1983): 99-112.
http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=357430&dl=GUIDE&coll=GUIDE&CFID=97795080&CF
TOKEN=56870801
Marshall, Catherine C. “How People Manage Information Over a Lifetime,” in Personal
Information Management (Jones and Teevan, eds.), University ofWashington Press,
Seattle,Washington, 2007. Also available via her website.
http://www.csdl.tamu.edu/~marshall/PIM%20Chapter-Marshall.pdf
Merrill, Douglas C. Getting Organized in the Google Era. Broadway Books (2010).
Perry, John. “A Plea for the Horizontally Organized,” on his website Structured
Procrastination: http://www.structuredprocrastination.com/light/organization.php
Whittaker, Steve, and Julia Hirschberg. “The Character, Value, and Management of Personal
Paper Archives.” ACM Trans. Comput.-Hum. Interact. 8, no. 2 (2001): 150-170.
http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?doid=376929.376932
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Research Information Management: Organising Humanities Material
Williams, Peter, Katrina Dean, Ian Rowlands, and Jeremy Leighton John. “Digital Lives:
Report of Interviews with the Creators of Personal Digital Collections.” Ariadne 55 (April
2008).
http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue55/williams-et-al/
Wilson, James A. J., and Meriel Patrick. “Sudamih Research Requirements Report” (2010).
http://sudamih.oucs.ox.ac.uk/docs/Sudamih%20Researcher%20Requirements%20Report.pd
f
37