I'm sitting here, watching Keyboard Maestro set the correct author and date for around 150 entries in my reference manager. Win!
@tscheufen Well in this case it's just that my universities website doesn't have the correct metadata set. So I used click at image to click on the author field, had keyboard maestro type in it, and then the same with the date field. If the documents are from various sources that's tricky, but I use the plugin to get the reference into Zotero first and then add the document to the reference.
@tscheufen I know it costs money, but Bookends reference manager software does a great job of importing details from PDFs.
@tscheufen I use Zotero, but I store the files themselves in DevonThink. Though I have been experimenting with storing notes and quotes in AirTable which works well if I have a lot of them or they're scattered among many references (being able to tag the notes for various topics and group/filter them based on that is extremely helpful).
@rosemaryorchard Do tagging and smart groups for notes and quotes in DEVONThink not work for you? How is AirTable better? :)
@tscheufen I hope you find something that works well for you. I find Bookends ability to read PDFs and to search online from almost any data in so many places is a life saver.
@Bruce They absolutely do, but I think in tables (preferably databases!). I like having columns for various kinds of tags (e.g. which assignment I was working on when I added this, if it's a quote or a note, etc.), plus I use Workflow to convert it into one documented sorted by tags with the references when I'm done so I can turn it into my assignment.
@rosemaryorchard It definitely is. I haven't dug into it much, but they seem to have made a quite extensive AppleScript dictionary. :)
@rosemaryorchard Which word processor are you using for your assignment? Since most of my work with references end up in LaTex I mostly store everything in BibDesk.
@jl\_siewert Sadly both. However as it has to be a "real Word document" it's easiest to just use that for the formatting options, table of contents, and generally saving time fixing things later after converting to Word.
@tscheufen I have looked at that, but I prefer the table format of a database for advanced sorting and filtering. I also then skip the "should I create multiple notes per source or one note, or one note per question it might answer..." craziness :)
@Bruce My sentiments exactly. They use the comment feature to provide feedback. I explained that PDFs can be annnotated, they have not yet responded to that...
@rosemaryorchard How 'bout converting them to CriticMarkup? I bet they'll hope right on the plain text train! 😜