In my previous comment to this post I talked about how I use DevonThink, a database program, to organize my field notes and other materials (photos, webpage archives, digital audio). I also use it to organize reading notes and PDFs. It is a great database, I think the best for anthropologists, because it is makes the best use of searchable and wiki-linkable RTFs. It makes it very easy to tag media and text files. It allows you to view most media files inside the database. And, it has really great search and smart-folder features. In short, it’s a great way to sort and organize data. But it’s not the best for actually WRITING the text notes that are bread and butter of anthropology.

And it’s the WRITING, getting notes down and into electronically archivable and manipulable and sortable text files, that can be a challenge. Typing up field notes requires some special features in software. I have found that Journaler.app, recommended to me by a friend, is actually a great fit. Also, since it’s donationware, it’s easy on the budget.

Journaler works pretty well as a database as well, with nice smart folders and concordance-based searching. But I use it for typing daily notes–field notes, reading notes, all notes–and put media and things like that right into DT.

A list of the most relevant features:

1) Automatically saves your document, you can change the frequency of these saves in preferences. Crucial in cases of frequent power cuts.
2) The text-entry field has a live word count, crucial for knowing when I’ve hit my current required quota for the day.
3) Each text note (in .rtf) is automatically stamped with the date of creation. It’s very easy to insert time and date stamps into the text field as well.
4) The text-entry window has fields for category (e.g. field note, reading note) and a field for keywords.
5) When you export text files the date, category, and keywords fields are inserted into the top of the body of the text.
6) The program also comes with a handy ‘drop-box’ feature: an alias that sits on your desktop. Files (text, web archive, audio) can just be dragged into this alias. When you drag a file to the drop-box, a dialog box pops up, asking you to specify date, category, keywords, etc. for the entry. The file is then entered into the database. Excellent!
7) Nice to have built into your fieldnotes: it’s very easy to password protect your database or ‘journal,’ nice for the IRB and privacy minded.
8 ) Built-in calendar allows you to make entries for upcoming events and future to-do items too! Just type in your upcoming appointment with the grand poo-bah of wherever. Awesome. Sadly, no alerts yet.

Weaknesses:
1) Apparently not so great at handling really big databases. (That’s why I’m planning on exporting the text and moving it into DT)
2) PDF handling is kind of weird, they seem to be embedded in RTF files, or linked to them in some weird way. This is a bummer, because I’d like to keep my reading notes together with field notes etc., and the reading notes should really be with the PDFs. Another reason to use Journaler as a note-taking app, and keep the real database elsewhere. My solution now is to use Journaler mostly for RTF production, then export them, all nicely tagged, and drop them into DT. Not ideal, but works for now.

I’ve used Nvivo (was trained on it back when it was N4 in 1997) for many years in data analysis in Native Title research & in private consultancy work. NVivo trainers (i.e. Pat Bazeley) recommend that you don’t type field notes into NVivo but into Word because of Word’s spellchecking and other functionalities. Incidentially, NVivo 8 (due for release next year) will have sound & video file capabilities incorporated. I can’t wait!

I live and work Central Australia (think extremely remote!). Like others who’ve written here, I use note books (paper note books, not computers) & pens for recording field notes – it’s just less intrusive and you just don’t have the luxury of power & internet (as for wireless… many places still lack reliable dial-up).

However, I don’t think *software* for field notes is really the issue. For me it’s the hardware that’s lacking. What I would really like to see is a PDA that could act as unobtrusively and as funtionally as a real paper note book. It should be able to run something like Evernote. For example, design features that I would like to see:

– must’look’ unobstrusive (imitating a real hardcover notebook would be a good place to start)

– must be larger than a current PDA (perhaps A5 size)

-must be able to record voice & cope with digital photos

-must weigh about the same as a hardcover note book or less

-must have long lasting, easily obtained batteries *or batereis that are easily charged by common 12/24 volt 4WD systems*. People might cry foul, but rechargable AA batteries would be good. (Why? Batteries tend to die when you’re only 2 days into a 10 day bush trip and the only batteries they stock at community XX are AAs)

Just a few thoughts

Regards,

Rebecca

I can’t use the internet in all places in the places I do research … no internet in hunting camps for example … and frankly I don’t usually carry a laptop to those places either (no electricity, too intrusive in camp life, etc). So, I still take notes by hand and then transfer them to Word or Atlas.ti.

I am intrigued, however, about the possibility of using collaborative, web-based software like Google or Zoho to work with people in the community and other researchers especially when I am not in the community. I think that’s next for me.

A nice feature is that whenever you link to a wikiword it does the housekeeping and links you to the same page. (It doesn’t handle grammatical transformations of such words (like pluralizations) though.

Also, don’t forget your solar power battery pack laptop work in the field. Here’s one I recently saw on Ecogeek.com

http://www.earthtechproducts.com/p2563.html

Microsoft keeps its formats secret, so that other software tools can’t open them. Whereas open formats mean you, or a computer programmer friend of yours, can always build a program to actually open the damn file.