looking east

I just read the 2006 edition of “L’art de la thèse” by Michel Beaud with the promising subtitle “Comment préparer et rédiger un mémoire de master, une thèse de doctorat ou tout autre travail universitaire à l’ère du Net“. The book is really helpful when writing a thesis, especially as it helps you manage your time and resources. It actually even made me draw up a (kind of) tight schedule for the coming months. But frankly speaking, there is hardly any mention of the “ère du Net” in the book, unless you consider mentioning Google, Yahoo! and several french websites for PhD students as “web era” worthy.

The book recommends to organise all information collected during research in specific directories on the computer and insists that the directory management is crucial. It doesn’t, however, mention any additional supportive software except for OpenOffice. At that point I would like to propose a (non-exhaustive) list of some “web era” alternatives which can improve if not boost the productivity:

• Reference management software: Software that allows you to manage your bibliography and other references. Ideally, it lets you import bibliographical references from websites like Google Book Search, Amazon or others. Additionally, it is lets you edit notes, add related weblinks (e.g. the author’s blog), upload files and store them together with the references. Features like tagging, relations, and powerful search mechanisms are definitely a plus. The most important thing about reference management software is that it allows you to export your bibliography in a standard format (like BibTex) and add it to your thesis when you start writing. I recommend Zotero by the way.
• Note-taking: When writing a thesis, notes are generally taken in a rather random and unorganized way. Therefore, what happens is that you need to reorganise your notes each time you add something. A personal wiki or anything similar allows you to tag and search your notes, so there is no need for reorganisation. A wiki will even allow you to store attachments (or Zotero backups) together with your notes. If your wiki is web-based it also lightens the dependency on your hardware.
• Bookmarking: del.icio.us. I recommed to install the firefox plugin for del.icio.us as this will allow you to browse and bookmark simultaneously.
• Todo lists: I am currently keeping my todo list locally in evolution where I can convert emails to tasks. Unfortunately, there is no feature to add a due date to a given taks though. Tadalist allows you to maintain simple web-based todo lists, Backpack is an improved version of Tadalist with Calendar and many additional features (but if you want to use the calendar you have to upgrade your account). Google seems to be implementing something similar for Gmail.
• I am currently also using other tools like vym for mindmapping, Latex for editing and formatting (especially the memoir class is awesome), and this blog for testing my ideas, but I won’t mention these in detail as this might be a bit too nerdy.

I believe many non-science students are either not aware of these tools or they feel not confident enough to use them. Anyway, I believe mentioning them in Michel Beaud’s book would distinctly improve it’s usefulness. Of course, tools change, as new ones enter the market and old ones disappear, hence: Why not provide a supplementary website to the book with up-to-date information?