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January 20, 2006

Request for Program: Notetella

I remain surprised that I can't find a program that lets me do the most basic of research tasks: Take notes. on books...you know, the paper-based web sites we used to read.

Oh, sure, there are word processors and various outliners, some of which are terrific. But note-taking has some specific requirements. So, here's my RFP for a program I'm calling Notetella for purposes of discussion. ("RFP" is short for "Easy for you to say.")

It's got a stand-alone client and a Web portion.

Client

The client lets me enter the bibliographic data for a source I'm reading. The form defaults to showing me all the other notes I've created for this source...as if I were writing my notes on a piece of paper.

I can enter notes about the book, with a field for the page the note refers to and a field for my comments

I can tag each source, author and note with multiple tags. It shows me a list of tags I've used for this book or project.

The app lets me create a project (e.g., "Article on Pitchers") and associate a set of sources with that project. The tags I create while working on that project stay associated with it.

Projects can apply to a single article or a cluster of chapters.

I can slice, dice and cluster all those notes at will.

When I put a note into my article, it preps a footnote entry for me suitable for pasting into my article.

It can turn bibliographic entries into text formatted and marked up according to the style I specify.

If I use a note when writing an article in my word processor, I can easily (not sure how) let Notetella know that I've used it so I don't use the same quote twice inadvertently. (This is probably the only feature that couldn't be implemented as a straightforward database app.)

Web

Why should I have to enter all that data myself? If anyone else has created a bibliographic entry for my source, the Web piece shows it to me.

It also shows me everyone else's notes on that book.

I can search by book, author, tag, Noteteller (i.e., other participants in the system).

I can leave comments on other people notes.

Every Noteteller gets her own page at the site, as at Delicious.com.

Notetellers can declare particular books or projects to be private, although public is better

I can upload/download notes and projects from my client.

I know there are pieces of this around. There are some great outliners. There are Web-based systems such as Cluebacca and Clipmarks (which got a nice mention in the WSJ today), but they're also not aimed exactly at my particular needs...and I think my needs in this case are fairly common among people reading books for research.

Sure wish I were a software developer. A really good one. With lots of free time. And an Hawaiian beach house. (Why not?)

Posted by D. Weinberger at January 20, 2006 09:03 AM

Comments

Are you still on a Mac? If so, check out CopyWrite for OS X. It does a number of the things you mention above.

http://www.bartastechnologies.com/products/copywrite/

Posted by: David Gammel | January 20, 2006 03:22 PM

That would be a great app!

The library catalog I developed in the early 90s had a lot of these features (dos + foxpro + wordperfect 5 + lantastic + MCI email was kind of the web 2.0 of its day), so let me suggest a couple other features (based on ones we had):

-all notes are timestamped, and they are also accessible via a reverse chronological log (optionally sorted in forward chronological order)

-different note takers can subscribe to each others notes, and track/download the most recent notes as they are taken, optionally filtering by tag keyword, formal subject headings, work identifier (e.g., ISBN), etc.

Posted by: Jay Fienberg | January 20, 2006 03:26 PM

Have you looked at www.citeUlike.org? It may have a fair amount of this functionality.

Posted by: vanderwal | January 20, 2006 06:10 PM

I have used the bibliographic database Endnote for 13 years (www.endnote.com) after starting out with another bibliographic database. I take most of my notes in it. It installs with a link to Word (probably to other word processors as well, and I am sure it can handle ASCII), formats bibliographies, and lets you enter notes, including links to websites etc. There are competing products around, but I think Endnote has the biggest market share. There are also open source versions being developed (Firefox Scholar, see Dan Cohen's web site at http://chnm.gmu.edu/tools/firefoxscholar/).

Endnote is not open source and some of the functionality you are requesting is missing (though I am sure you can do a lot by fiddling with new fields and so on), but there is a large community of users, and they have developed many "styles" for lots of academic journals (see http://www.endnote.com/support/enstyles.asp, but googling will probably find you a lot more). Meaning that if you have written an article, you can have it automatically formatted to the reference style the journal you are writing for wants.

I have more than 2000 books and articles, with notes, in my Endnote database, representing about 18 years of reading and taking notes. Rather useful - and trust me, I back it up religiously. See http://www.espen.com/archives/2005/11/the_flat_and_th.html for an example of notes.)

Recommended with the the usual caveats - it is now a web 2.0 product, but it has worked very nicely for me.

Posted by: Espen | January 21, 2006 04:22 AM

Uniwakka is a free wiki on steroids to handle all your academic & research requirements. With the OpenOffice plugin you can also integrate it with your desktop.

* Notes
* Full bibliographic functions
* Collaborative authoring
* Versioning & History
* Online/Offline


A test installation available for everyone can be found at http://www.istitutocolli.org/uniwakka/

Posted by: DKa | January 22, 2006 08:16 AM

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