Mac apps for humanities and social sciences
I'm trying to learn about Mac software for academics who are not in science, medicine and technology but in humanities and social sciences.
Most of the apps I've seen reviewed and recommended -- especially following leads on the site ‘Affordable Mac apps for various academic tasks’ [http://homepage.mac.com/kvmagruder/hsci/resources/academicApps.html] -- are for researchers whose work typically involves referring to hundreds of journal articles in pdf form. But I'm doing historical research (on a period within living memory) and am looking for Mac software for organising my data (rather than my secondary, bibliographic sources, which are books as often as articles). My primary sources include transcripts of oour interviews, archive documents, archive newspaper articles, photographs and other images, emails and letters sent to me by informants.
In the past I've been unadventurous in my software: nothing much beyond Office, Firefox and EndNote. Recently, though, I've been experimenting with apps I'd never tried or even heard of, especially Sente and DevonThink. For both those apps I have to say I found the documentation and help inadequate and had trouble getting the hang of them, especially with Sente where my free period has now expired.
I've looked at various Mac forums and the DevonThink one but would appreciate some more directed help. If I describe what I think I need, perhaps some kind person with more experience could offer suggestions (e.g. to forget about Sente or pay up and persist with it).
What I need: to organise my data and notes in such a way that I can draw on them for writing articles and chapters. In particular, I use (a) quotes from primary and secondary sources, usually with the notes I've made on either the particular passage or the source in generally, and (b) notes of my own ideas, unconnected to specific references.
It looks as if DevonThink Pro Office might provide a place where I can put everything and organise it, as well as a sophisticated search technology for finding items.
Sente seemed to offer a different part of what I needed. As well as being a bibliographic database for articles, books etc and presumably items in any form or genre one wanted, it can actually link to the item in question -- as long as it’s on the computer or a website -- and open it; you can then select a passage, click ‘Make Note’ and write a note that includes the quote. That seemed to work, at least on conventional pdf articles. The record (I forget the Sente term) for the article would then include the notes, each with its quote and the quote’s page number.
There seem to be some problems, though. Say I want to take one of the notes-with-a-quote that’s attached to a particular item in my Sente database, and transfer it to somewhere else, like a word processor or DevonThink. The note would need to have its reference (the names or identifier for the source) automatically incorporated so it would stay with the note when moved across. Sente didn’t seem to do this.
Moreover, the Sente procedure for making notes on an item -- putting the information in the fields they provide -- is far from intuitive. The notes on the items in their sample Library seem to be basically single words or one-liners, whereas my notes are often pages long and fitting them into the Sente format would be an awkward and unfriendly process, if possible at all. And to get the notes to appear in a form in which they could be copied and pasted into another app, you have to, strangely, generate a ‘preview’ bibliography in which the way the notes appear isn’t at all convenient for my purposes.
Nor is it clear how I'd cope in Sente with a 50-page interview transcript -- typically in Word or some other word processor, and not in pdf. I've seen postings on forums that say Sente doesn’t cope well with long documents.
Does there exist a Sente equivalent for people like historians, that would enable the making and exporting of notes on material in different forms, and not just pdfs?
Grateful for any light that can be thrown on all this!
Most of the apps I've seen reviewed and recommended -- especially following leads on the site ‘Affordable Mac apps for various academic tasks’ [http://homepage.mac.com/kvmagruder/hsci/resources/academicApps.html] -- are for researchers whose work typically involves referring to hundreds of journal articles in pdf form. But I'm doing historical research (on a period within living memory) and am looking for Mac software for organising my data (rather than my secondary, bibliographic sources, which are books as often as articles). My primary sources include transcripts of oour interviews, archive documents, archive newspaper articles, photographs and other images, emails and letters sent to me by informants.
In the past I've been unadventurous in my software: nothing much beyond Office, Firefox and EndNote. Recently, though, I've been experimenting with apps I'd never tried or even heard of, especially Sente and DevonThink. For both those apps I have to say I found the documentation and help inadequate and had trouble getting the hang of them, especially with Sente where my free period has now expired.
I've looked at various Mac forums and the DevonThink one but would appreciate some more directed help. If I describe what I think I need, perhaps some kind person with more experience could offer suggestions (e.g. to forget about Sente or pay up and persist with it).
What I need: to organise my data and notes in such a way that I can draw on them for writing articles and chapters. In particular, I use (a) quotes from primary and secondary sources, usually with the notes I've made on either the particular passage or the source in generally, and (b) notes of my own ideas, unconnected to specific references.
It looks as if DevonThink Pro Office might provide a place where I can put everything and organise it, as well as a sophisticated search technology for finding items.
Sente seemed to offer a different part of what I needed. As well as being a bibliographic database for articles, books etc and presumably items in any form or genre one wanted, it can actually link to the item in question -- as long as it’s on the computer or a website -- and open it; you can then select a passage, click ‘Make Note’ and write a note that includes the quote. That seemed to work, at least on conventional pdf articles. The record (I forget the Sente term) for the article would then include the notes, each with its quote and the quote’s page number.
There seem to be some problems, though. Say I want to take one of the notes-with-a-quote that’s attached to a particular item in my Sente database, and transfer it to somewhere else, like a word processor or DevonThink. The note would need to have its reference (the names or identifier for the source) automatically incorporated so it would stay with the note when moved across. Sente didn’t seem to do this.
Moreover, the Sente procedure for making notes on an item -- putting the information in the fields they provide -- is far from intuitive. The notes on the items in their sample Library seem to be basically single words or one-liners, whereas my notes are often pages long and fitting them into the Sente format would be an awkward and unfriendly process, if possible at all. And to get the notes to appear in a form in which they could be copied and pasted into another app, you have to, strangely, generate a ‘preview’ bibliography in which the way the notes appear isn’t at all convenient for my purposes.
Nor is it clear how I'd cope in Sente with a 50-page interview transcript -- typically in Word or some other word processor, and not in pdf. I've seen postings on forums that say Sente doesn’t cope well with long documents.
Does there exist a Sente equivalent for people like historians, that would enable the making and exporting of notes on material in different forms, and not just pdfs?
Grateful for any light that can be thrown on all this!
MacBook, Mac OS X (10.5.8)
