Thursday, May 12, 2011

Where do you put them? Conference Papers

Do you have piles of handouts from conferences, workshops, seminars and lectures hanging around your work area? How do you find a particular paper in a hurry? What about webinars, powerpoint presentations, photographs, and recordings?

Where do you put them?

As part of my filing system I have a folder named Family History - Presentations where I store information that I have gathered irrespective of its format. This folder is stored, with my other Family History folders on an external hard drive that is regularly backed up to another hard drive.

I think that all presenters in this day and age should provide a soft-copy of their notes via the internet or email, however, many do not share my fondness for online resources or my commitment to save paper. I have a scan and shred policy for printed notes; I scan handouts, add the digital copies to my files and dispose of the hard copy files.

If I just have one resource in one format I simply name it with the presenter's name and the title of the presentation and fling it in the folder.  If there is a range of resources for one presentation eg voice recording, photographs, my typed notes and a powerpoint presentation I create a folder with the presenter's name and the title of the presentation and put all relevant files in the folder.



 I was flummoxed when I had to deal with the CD of papers from the  2011 Rootstech Conference  that were published in one 400+ page .pdf document. I don't need to save everything in this document but don't feel like undertaking the tedious task of chopping it up. If it had been published  in html format with links to individual .pdf documents it would have been so easy to identify those I wanted to save.

Ideally I'd love to have any handouts in a digital format prior to a presentation so that I can view them on my tablet and add my annotations  as the event is in progress.

Generally this simple system works for me. I wonder how others approach the organisation of their workshop/conference/seminar handouts?

3 comments:

Randy Seaver said...

well done, I need to do that. I have a large collection all in one file folder titled "Presentations"

I also have a folder titled "Articles on the Internet" and "Books on the Internet"

Anonymous said...

Another advantage to electronic copies is that they're always with you. However I admit to not being as committed to ridding myself of hard copies as you are...something I'm working on. Thanks.

Unknown said...

Thank you, thank you, thank you! I was just beginning to ask myself that. (I don't have piles —YET— because I'm pretty new at doing genalogy, but I do have 1 pile I've been dreading to approach. This is the answer for me! (And incidently, it will also work for my other hobbies (obsessions); how to handle stitching hints I pick up at stitch-ins, how to handle the "to-be-saved" handouts from Science Fiction and Fantasy conventions, and how to handle the "how-tos" of computer technology.
So again, thank you, thank you, thank you. (I think I'm one short, I must be leaving out the computers.)
Sue McCormick

LinkWithin

Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...