Reference Papers 1

[maddocks]

We all have acquired numbers of reference papers over the years in this business that we felt at the time would provide us with some guidance or insight into different aspects.

How do I store these papers? Used to be binders but now am finding that I can't keep track of the papers. How do you store this info so you can reference and find the info quickly? Any ideas that work?

 

[ScottyUK]

Scan them into your computer. If you have access to a modern digital copier many of them have a scan option to create a jpeg or pdf from the scanned image. I have relatively few paper files, and a fairly complex directory structure on my computer containing numerous datasheets, commissioning notes, correspondence and so on. It is easy to search for a document if you have some discipline with naming files and setting up the directory structure. It sounds laborious but I don't think it takes any more time than a paper filing system. A major plus if you leave jobs it that it is easy to burn a few CDs or dump it all to a memory stick so you don't lose all that information.


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Sometimes I only open my mouth to swap feet...

 

[pmover]

i'll second ScottyUK recommendations. for years, i would haul around many boxes of technical literature (codes, stds, tech papers, etc.). once the scanner was developed, i started creating e-copies and storing the files. confidential or copyright documents are another matter and one should honor that right/protection.

good luck!
-pmover

 

[zdas04]

I was doing a peer-assist once and my collugue on the assis-team pulled out an electronic copy of GPSA to answer a question that was hanging. He was definately the hero of the session. That got me to thinking and now I have a CD case with GPSA, Marks, selected ASME codes (all paid for and legal), selected U.S. CFR statutes, and 5 DVD's of specific papers that I've accumulated and scanned into .pdf files. One thing to be really careful of is to scan the papers with OCR. If you don't then Adobe can't do word searches and you've given up a lot of the benefits. With OCR I can do an Explorer search on the DVD for a key word and get the relevant documents without having to remember what directory the files are stuffed into.

The way my attorney intrepets the copyright issue is that I purchased the original media for my personal use--that use absolutely encompasses making copies for my personal use regardless of the media. I can't give copies away. I can't sell copies. But I can have copies in different formats for my own use as long as I don't remove a copyright notification.

David

 

[tickle]

I have found that some equations may get a little corrupted during scanning and OCR. Just a warning

 

[jmw]

Most organisations now provide electronic copy.
You could recomend to your company that they adopt a policy of all new technical papers being electronic versions and every time you refer to an existing reference, uptdate it from the original source. That way, the references that do get used (if found) get updated.
Many references e.g. standards, get updated periodically so it would be no hardship to replace old paper versions with more up to date electonic copies. Articles are another matter, but if they are sourced from magazines then some have archived copies on the web sites that can be downloaded.

By the way, there is some software that will read scanned text and covert to text files... never used it so I don't know how good it/they are but just a thought.


JMW

http://www.ViscoAnalyser.com