LibKey Nomad
Organizing your files
You'll be much happier down the line if you think about organizing your files up front. In general it's best if you name your files consistently and store them where you can get back to them easily.
- Google DriveAnother free service that syncs files across multiple computers and mobile devices.
- Zotero
Save, organize, share, and cite your sources -- anything from scholarship to YouTube videos. Our guide has Carleton-specific instructions for installing and using Zotero with personal and lab computers, and for getting the most storage space possible. - DropboxA free service that syncs your documents across multiple computers and mobile devices.
- Evernote
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Save entire web pages or just pieces of them, type in your own notes, search through everything, create categories, and have access from your computer or your mobile device. - EndNote
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Available to Carleton people, this is a fully featured bibliographic management system. Import citations from catalogs and databases or type them in by hand, embed PDFs, search, sort, export as a bibliography in any one of hundreds of citation styles, and manage long papers with Cite While You Write. - BibDesk (Mac only)Collect and organize your citations. Upload files (you can annotate PDFs in Preview or Acrobat) and generate bibliographies.
Note-Taking Tools
- ZoteroSave, organize, share, and cite your sources -- anything from scholarship to YouTube videos. Our guide has Carleton-specific instructions for installing and using Zotero with personal and lab computers, and for getting the most storage space possible.
- Group Research JournalSpreadsheet that allows you to track your notes and responses to readings in a consistent way, individually or with a group.
To use, make a copy. Click the drop down menu on your tab, hover over "Copy to," and choose "New Spreadsheet" - Evernote
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Save entire web pages or just pieces of them, type in your own notes, search through everything, create categories, and have access from your computer or your mobile device. - EndNote
- This link opens in a new window
Available to Carleton people, this is a fully featured bibliographic management system. Import citations from catalogs and databases or type them in by hand, embed PDFs, search, sort, export as a bibliography in any one of hundreds of citation styles, and manage long papers with Cite While You Write. - MS Word (especially Outline View)One great way to use MS Word's Outline View is to make the top level of your outline be the citation to the work you're reading, and then all sub-points be the notes associated with that work. That way you can have reading notes for multiple works in one place, fully searchable and organized.
Annotate PDFs
- Preview (Mac only)Create annotations using the options under the "Tools" menu.
- HypothesisAllows you to annotate (and share your annotations) for any text you find on the web.
- Papers (Mac & IOS only)Search, annotate, organize, and share PDFs.
- Skim (Mac only)Read and annotate PDFs.
- MendeleyMendeley, owned by Elsevier, lets you save and annotate PDFs. You can also search across your own and others people's collections.
- Evernote (Annotation features require a Premium account)
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Save entire web pages or just pieces of them, type in your own notes, search through everything, create categories, and have access from your computer or your mobile device. - Adobe Acrobat (Library and Weitz Lab computers only)
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Acrobat is not free for users to install, but it is installed on Lab computers in Weitz and 4th Libe. Click the link to see Annotation features.
File Types
You can take notes and make comments on Word documents by using the "review" feature.
For most of the options on this page, PDF files are far preferable to other types of files. You can save Word documents as PDFs, use the "print" menu to print web pages or other files to PDF, or use Adobe Acrobat Pro (available on all lab computers) to convert files to PDF.
Many of the annotation features work best if the PDF has been run through an OCR process (Optical Character Recognition helps the PDF reader know that the words on a screen are words rather than images, which enables things like copying, pasting, and highlighting). You can do this using Adobe Acrobat Pro, which is available on all lab machines.
