Software for archiving articles and other documents?

Posted by Pavi
Aug 17, 2011 at 09:11 AM

Hi shattered,

I just made a thread to answer this question, and for me the product that fits the bill is Ultra Recall.

You can dump in text, .doc, .pdf, webpages, email, anything and everything, and it UR indexes the data and provides cross referenced search that is fast. You can also put the data in organized folders (ie. nodes) that are logically linked to more than one topic (ie. hybrid car article could be under “cars” and “environment”) as well as tag articles with keywords. Searching allows you to add any number of criterion, for example by keyword, by text, article type, field code, etc. A “notes” pane means you can add your own text/review to the document for easy recollection or searching. Search results can also be cycled through and the query text is highlighted, and searches can be saved which is nice if you always want articles related to a certain topic handy.

The other product that has these capabilities is Mybase, which I used to use as it is very robust although rather slow in development. The search is not on the same level as UR, however, as it lacks Boolean search and multiple input, and this may be a problem as your repository grows. For webpages only, Web Research 3 worked incredibly well for me, and if UR didn’t duplicate it’s functionality I would still use it.

Again, this is the product I would recommend according to the way I work, and others may have other opinions. UR has a slight learning curve as not all of it’s features are immediately clear, but it is worth the payoff when you get over the hump. It’s kind of interesting that you asked the question as you did, because one main use I have for UR is to do precisely what you ask: archive webpages and articles for later reference. Of course the other uses don’t hurt either!

Best, /Pavi

shatteredmindofbob wrote:
>What software do you use/would recommend for storing text you may not refer to again
>for possibly more than a year, but want to keep somewhere it can be easily found when the
>time comes?
> >Lately I’ve been having a hell of a time using Google or
>newspaper/magazine site’s search engines to find something I read two years ago and
>suddenly remembered and would now like to refer to again.