Anyone have a good system for saving published articles in various formats?

[Leapfrog100]

I use an A-Z paper filing system which has historically worked well for storing articles and other writing I've had published. However, more and more of it is now either published online, or I only have electronic copies e.g. pdfs. It's all a bit of a jumble and I'm looking for any suggestions on how to create a system whereby I could find any one at any time.

One of the reasons I seem to resist putting things in my "hard copy" A to Z system is that often I have something I want to keep, but don't really need it to refer to, so don't want to be looking at it every time I open the file drawer, and don't want my file drawers stuffed full of "stuff I wrote once, want to keep, and might one day refer to...just not now". Can anyone help?

[mcogilvie]

After being unimpressed with OS X/iOS options like Sente and Papers, I think I will probably stay with Zotero for a while. In addition to web, there is a Mac desktop program in beta.

Revised: Just to clarify, I use Zotero for citation and retrieval of professional papers. I use Evernote for everything else, up to and including magazine articles I may use in a class.

[mmorowitz]

Evernote.

Everything can be kept in "notebooks" or tagged.

With a premium account, PDFs can be searchable so you don't even need to bother with tagging, you can just search for what you want.

[Oogiem]

Can anyone help?

Set up an A to Z filing system in DEVONTHink. SUpports all sorts of file types, fully searchable and no cloud or fees involved, you are in control of all your own data.

[drm]

Evernote can be everywhere (web, Mac, PC, iphone, android) and supports just about every type of file.

The premium account search feature is nice and I think that if this becomes your go to storage system for data files then it is well worth it.

[TesTeq]

Evernote can be everywhere (web, Mac, PC, iphone, android) and supports just about every type of file.

Evernote. Period.

[Mike L]

if you are not capturing web pages then Evernote or one of its competitors is probably a good choice. I tried using Evenote and some other apps and (as of a year ago, anyway) they didn't capture what web pages looked like very accurately. Since most of the stuff I want to capture is web pages and not pdf this was a problem.

I found an app called Scrapbook that is an add-on for Firefox and it works great for capturing web pages. You can capture the entire page the way it looks or just pieces of it. You can also drag-and-drop pdf and any other file into Scrapbook. The tool allows you to organize files by folders and sub-folders. So for example I have a top folder called Recipes and then sub-folders such as Chicken, Beef, Veggies, etc.

I keep the folders that Scrapbook creates on Dropbox so I can access them from any computer. The one downside for me so far is that my iPad can't open the folder structure correctly in Safari (there is no Firefox browser for iPad). I"ve found an awkward workaround, but if you depend on Apple products then Scrapbook is probably not a good solution for you.

[mmorowitz]

if you are not capturing web pages then Evernote or one of its competitors is probably a good choice. I tried using Evenote and some other apps and (as of a year ago, anyway) they didn't capture what web pages looked like very accurately. Since most of the stuff I want to capture is web pages and not pdf this was a problem.

I'd recommend trying Evernote again for web capture. They've improved it dramatically in the past year.

[Oogiem]

if you are not capturing web pages then Evernote or one of its competitors is probably a good choice.

DEVON THink does a good job capturing Web Pages, either as Rich texts, web archives or even as plain text.

[Roger]

One of the reasons I seem to resist putting things in my "hard copy" A to Z system is that often I have something I want to keep, but don't really need it to refer to, so don't want to be looking at it every time I open the file drawer, and don't want my file drawers stuffed full of "stuff I wrote once, want to keep, and might one day refer to...just not now".

I have a parallel "cold archive" filing system where I keep stuff that isn't in any sort of current use, but that I still want to keep around for a while. I go through my entire active filing system every once in a while, somewhere between yearly and quarterly, and archive out things that, as you say, I don't want to look at every day.


Cheers,
Roger