Web clippings, Word documents, emails, snippets of text - these are the things that can easily bog your database down and make using it a messy, unpleasant experience. That said, Evernote is ideal for a lot of the miscellaneous ‘stuff’ we amass over our day. Labels and marks also allow you to flag documents in various ways - important, to do, read, and so on.
Hierarchical folders, smart folders (essentially, saved searches), tags, and Devonthink’s auto classify and auto group features ensure that your material is organised exactly how you want it, and you can retrieve relevant documents very easily. By setting up a database for every large project, you can avoid your database becoming cluttered with irrelevant material. If you are a lawyer, you could have a database for each of your cases. For example, if you are an academic, you can have a database for each of your major research projects. Devonthink for large projects, Evernote for the smaller stuffĭevonthink is perfect for large projects where you will be collecting lots of related documents, and organisation is key. With this in mind, let’s see how Devonthink and Evernote can complement each other in your digital research workflow. While Devonthink and Evernote share many of the same features, they’re aimed at different audiences: Evernote is a mass consumer product aimed at everyone, while Devonthink is a more specialist product aimed at people with more advanced information-management needs. Evernote remains one of the most popular and widely supported note-taking apps out there, and it still plays an important role in my overall workflow - especially when it comes to managing my life, rather than my work. However, there is no reason to throw the baby out with the bath water. With its more granular search and advanced document management features, Devonthink is ideal for doing research, rather than simply amassing research material. Devonthink has various advantages for heavy lifters, including its support for multiple databases and indexing files outside your database. Evernote is great for sucking things in, but getting things out - physically, in terms of export, and conceptually, in terms of ideas - is much more difficult.
While Evernote’s ability to capture information from the digital and physical world is unparalleled, beyond even a couple thousand notes it can be difficult to visualise your data and hence see the wood from the trees - however obsessive you are with organising your notebooks and tags. As I explained in an earlier post, there are various problems with using Evernote for research management, especially when your needs are more advanced (say, you’re an academic or lawyer) and your database is very large. Recently, the awesome information management system, Devonthink has largely replaced Evernote as the home for my digital research material on the Mac.
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