I’ve been managing a lot of the information I gather in my studies with bits of card and not infrequently on Excel spreadsheets, or by putting it up on a Google doc.
Cards are nice because they are a discrete unit of data around a particular subject, and they can be used anywhere data presents itself. Of course, cards can’t be grepped for terms, and while they can be organized, if you need a card in more than one pile you have to copy it by hand.
Excel is nice, because I can separate data into fields and manipulate it with macrons or other built-in functions. Of course, I’m building the methods by hand.
Google Docs is great for allowing me access to my data anywhere I can get access to the web. But it’s less powerful than local software, and I can’t work offline.
Seems to me that what I need is some kind of database software that will allow me to create classes of records, modify those classes as I realize more fields may be needed, search specifying fields and other criterion and generate output of my own design. It would also be useful if I could create macros or other logic to provide for functionality not already given.
To give you an idea of what I need, suppose I spend an afternoon compiling a list of related culinary terms in Latin, teasing out distinctions and consulting multiple sources. All that data is scribbled on something, or typed in somewhere, and in a form that was generated ad hoc for that task, and not amenable to searching, refinement, ect. But if I had a program that would let me create a record for each word with a number of fields for sources, keywords, notes, etc., then that work would not have to be redone for the next such project if it overlapped with previous work – I could just search for the record and attach it to the new project.
I’d prefer something in open source software available on multiple platforms for free, but I’d be willing to invest in something that I found I could work comfortably with. Any suggestions?
