DH Tools and Tips for Conducting Research

1. Reference management: designed for the collection, organization, and storage of citations. For this we recommend Zotero, which is a free reference manager that automatically senses citations in your web browser and allows you to save sources with the click of a single button. You can organize your citations into collections; automatically download full-text .pdfs attached to your citations; share collections with other researchers and/or students; and automatically generate properly formatted bibliographies in a variety of styles. There are tutorial screencasts available through Zotero’s own website to get you started, but this tool is as easy to use as the “Bookmarks” function on your web browser, and much more sophisticated in terms of the bibliographic detail it retains.
2. Note Taking: Word processors do a perfectly good job of this, so you may not wish to change your existing note-taking system (in Microsoft Word or similar) if it’s working well for you. If, however, you find that your files end up in disarray and it’s difficult to find notes you’ve taken on an article or book you’ve been reading or in the archives, you may want a software solution that can help you manage your resources. Evernote is a straightforward tool that allows you to keep your notes organized into “Notebook” collections and to easily add images, web clippings, and even sound files to your text notes. There is an extension for your web browser called the “Web Clipper” that allows you to save screenshot extracts from your web browsing (particularly useful for digital archival material that you might want to save for later). All your notes are automatically searchable when they’re entered into Evernote. You can also share “Notebooks” and create to-do lists within the program. If you want, you can even combine note-taking on paper with easy digitization through Evernote’s specially designed paper notebooks. Another simple option for note-taking is to use Zotero for note-taking as well: there is a “Notes” section” attached to each reference that allows you to store your own notes on that text alongside the Bibliographic materials.
3. Cloud Storage: Once you have gathered research materials, you want to make sure you don’t lose them! Evernote is automatically saved in the Cloud, as is Zotero, but you can also copy your libraries from these programs for an extra safe back up if you wish. Cloud storage offers a number of advantages, not least of which is automation: you can install Dropbox on your computer, save all your files there, and essentially forget about it, if you want, since it syncs automatically. If you’re in Canada and need to store personal data from research subjects, an alternative is Sync.com. Both of these are free for the first 5GB, and then there are various Neftlix-style subscription options. Your institution may also have a cloud storage facility for your use, so you may wish to check your options there before spending money on the premium versions of Dropbox or Sync.  
4. Images and Image Management: For taking pictures of archival and other materials for your own research, all you need is a smartphone. See the ScannerPro tutorial for detail on this: though we contextualize that material as a classroom activity earlier in the volume, we both use the same app for our archival images. You will also likely want to make sure that you back up your images either on a Cloud service as mentioned above, or on an external hard drive, or both. If you are a serious photographer, you can also use the image file management features in Photoshop’s Lightroom just as well for research photos as for any other purpose (and these will do a good job of automatically saving the image metadata for you). This last option has a bit of a steeper learning curve, however, so we wouldn’t recommend it unless you already use it for other purposes. For details about consistent and preservation-friendly file naming protocols, refer to UBC's Data Management Guide. The whole guide is also useful for thinking about the preservation of your own images and research materials generally. 
5. Collaboration and Project Management: If you do end up undertaking collaborative research either with your students or with other scholars, you will likely find that email threads quickly become overwhelming. In order to streamline the project management process, Basecamp is an excellent (although not free) option. It contains calendars, to-do lists, file and document sharing, and discussion boards that facilitate team-work. A new, free option for keeping all those messages out of your inbox is Slack, which organizes conversations into “Channels” and allows for real-time messaging as well as email-style correspondence.   
6. Writing Up Your Research: When it comes to actually writing up your research, your use of a reference manager like Zotero will begin to really pay dividends. You can install a Zotero plugin for Microsoft Word that will allow you to automatically drag and drop properly-formatted citations into your work as you write. As anyone who has completed a full book manuscript or a dissertation in Microsoft Word will tell you, however, word processing programs are not always well-equipped to handle full-sized monograph manuscripts. You may instead wish to consider trying out Scrivener, which is a program designed specifically for the completion of full book-length works and has many more options for every stage of the writing process (including outline and brainstorming tools, full manuscript structure breakdowns, and annotation capabilities) beyond what a traditional word processor can offer.
7. Freeing yourself from distraction: If you find yourself spending hours looking up new digital tools for note-taking rather than actually writing the essay or article you intended to write, you might wish to avail yourself of some focusing tools for the initial drafting stage. Unlike many digital applications which offer bells and whistles, these tend to strip your experience back to the bare essentials. If you want your computer to feel and act like a typewriter sometimes, without a thousand browser windows open or even a clock to remind you of how little time you have, you might try OmmWriter, which creates a serene full-screen writing environment which can (if you wish) provide calming backgrounds and white noise, or be stripped to a simple, silent grey screen. Although you will need to transport your writing elsewhere later in order to integrate citations and to format your work (copy and paste does the trick here), the distraction-free digital environment may be worth it if you have trouble concentrating with a lot of visual distraction. OmmWriter functions on a “Pay what you think is fair” model. Internet blocking softwares, for when DH really becomes too much, can also facilitate concentration. There are lots of these kinds of programs out there, but Cold Turkey is a free option.  

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