How to keep track of your research, Part 2

A while back I posted an iPhone app which some researchers use to keep track of photographs they take of documents they’ve consulted in archives. Miriam Posner, a colleague from Emory University libraries (who I met at the Digital Humanities Summer Institute a couple of summers back) has posted to her blog steps for taking your photos, converting them into searchable PDF documents, and saving them for future use in Zotero. You can read her full tutorial here. It’s specific to Macs.

Here’s a photo from the tutorial:

Note how Miriam includes the full citation of the item she is using on a piece of note paper (NOT a post-it note though!) in every photograph she takes. This is a great idea. Another suggestion when using archival material is to start by taking a photo of the box label, and then the file number, before photographing any documents from inside the box so that you can re-trace your steps.

You will also find this tutorial linked from our Archival Material research guide. Thanks Miriam!

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