Sunday, May 16, 2021

From the Archives - Where do you put them? Conference Papers

 From time to time I go through my blog archive and select an old post to repost in my From the Archives series. 

I still follow this practice that I outlined in a post ten years ago although the files have moved every few years as I upgrade my external hard drive. It is pleasing to note that ten years down the track many of the notes I file arrive in digital format.

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?

1 comment:

Louis Kessler said...

That's an excellent system, Jill. I don't like that Windows Explorer sorts folders separate from files. What I do to get around that is include a shortcut to the folder, which gets sorted in the correct place with the files. I store my files in a subfolder for the conference or organization giving the webinar with other materials from that conference or website. I'm unsure though if that is the best setup because it's sometimes tough to find the talk that I'm looking for, because I can't remember where I heard it or who gave it.

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