Security is a tricky affair: it’s difficult to establish, to maintain, and to verify. Take all the steps you can to keep your data and devices secure.

• Backup, keeping a copy in your home and somewhere outside your home that you consider safe and are likely to be able to access in an emergency.
• Secure, so that only you and those you trust can get access to your information and accounts.
• Plan for routine recovery, such as when you’re away from your computer, but need to gain access to your information and accounts.
• Plan for extreme recovery, such as when you are disabled and unable to communicate, or when you pass away.

Continue reading Stay Secure →

Digital voice recorders can be a handy tool for dictation or recording research interviews. Here are some of the things I consider when looking for a recorder.

Two models I’m fond of:

I spend a fair amount of time linking PDF documents to records in Endnote. Unfortunately, Endnote requires you to (a) drag and drop, or (b) navigate into submenus to link to a PDF.

In OS X, you can bind a keystroke to any menu item in a specific application using the System Preferences > Keyboard & Mouse settings. Use this to your advantage! Endnote lacks a keystroke for “Link to PDF…”, so I created one: Command-Option-L

Now, when I highlight a record in my library and press the key combination, an “Attach…” file dialog box opens up and I select the PDF of the article, web site, etc.

Continue reading Endnote: Create a key binding for linking to a PDF (OS X) →

Endnote is primarily intended to help you store citation information and create bibliographies for your academic papers, but it also allows you to collect PDFs of the documents. This is helpful for journal articles, and fantastic for dynamic content.

When reading online articles or web pages that you might need to cite, print to PDF and attach the PDF file to your Endnote record. On Mac OS X, this capability is built-in to the Print dialog. In Windows, you’ll need to install software that allows you to print to PDF.

The purpose of a citation is to allow your readers (and you) to relocate the material you use as evidence in your writing. By keeping a PDF of web pages as you saw them, you have the exact material on which you’re basing your quotations and interpretations. In other words, you (and your critics) have access to the version you’re relying on, even if it’s later changed significantly.

This is particularly important when the material you’re citing changes frequently, such as newspaper articles and political websites.

One of the most time consuming tasks of writing is finding that perfect quotation, finding that page number where an important idea was introduced, etc. By recording what you believe to be valuable (citation-worthy) quotations in your Endnotes records, you can quickly search them and cite the page. I store quotes in the “Custom 7” field in this format:

This way, I have the quotation and the page number and can quickly insert critical information into my papers.

My rule: If it would be worth highlighting, it’s worth entering into Endnote. Continue reading Endnote: Store quotations →