I'm really not much of a pack-rat, but I have spent the last sixteen years hanging on to a pile of papers from college which I felt were particularly noteworthy and which I've been unwilling to toss. I didn't own a computer in college, so these papers are not in electronic format at all: they are either handwritten (back then a few profs would actually allow such a thing!) or typed (usually by female friends who took pity on me). I'd like to be rid of the pile of tree-pulp, but I don't want to lose the thoughts recorded there. And more than just wanting to archive these papers, I want them in a form I can actually use from time to time.
My solution is to re-type them into Accordance as user tools. I suppose I could scan and OCR them, but I'm also editing and revising them as I type, so it's just as easy to key them in; and in the case of the handwritten papers, I have to key them in.
The advantages of having these papers in an Accordance user tool are that I can hypertext the Scripture references, I can quickly search them or amplify to them, and I can organize them so that they have a hierarchical browser. Besides, most of these papers deal with Biblical or religious themes, so where better to have access to them than in my Bible study software?
# posted by David Lang @ 11:38 AM
