What is the best method for organizing scientific papers and other references in the digital realm? This question is becoming increasingly more important for me in just the last year. The vast majority of the references I need are now available digitally (but I still do physically go to the library from time to time...which is a nice break from the office sometimes).
I have gotten so used to downloading PDFs, renaming them quickly with date/author/keyword, and then putting them in a subject folder. But I am getting so many now that I can't find them easily and I end up re-downloading the dang paper. This is not efficient.
GoogleDesktop search does a decent job, but I wish I could filter the search to one master directory so I don't get a bunch of unwanted search results. The problem is that one paper can fit into many categories (obviously), so I would like a fast and easy way to "tag" the PDFs with my own keywords.
Branner Blog has a nice post summarizing a handful of the bibliographic and citation tools out there on the internets. Check it out. I downloaded Zotero a couple weeks ago after reading a rave review of it, but haven't really used it much...it might simply be that i'm too lazy (busy?) to learn how to properly use it.
I would love to hear from people about how they digitally manage information. Please drop a comment.
image above from here
