How to best store journals

[Wade Wegner]

Hi all,

I was recently asked a question about how to handle a particular
scenario, and I found myself without a lot of good ideas. I thought
I'd share, and see if anyone could make some recommendations.

A friend has been writing journals for the last 20 years. He now
finds himself with 30-40 books worth of journals, and he wants to
transfer them out of the books and into digital documents. In
addition to storing them digitally, he also wants to have the ability
to perform full text search and indexing on various topics, so that he
can quickly look things up or find them. For instance, all the
journals written while in Europe might be indexed as Travel, and
Europe, so that they can be quickly looked up and recalled.

He initially thought of paying someone to type them up in Word
documents, but I'm not sure if he'd lose his ability to perform full
text search and indexing. Since I'm a custom app developer in .NET
and SQL Server, my first thought had been to create a custom solution,
but the more I think about it the more I don't like that idea.

Does anyone have any thoughts? What is the best way to handle this?

Thanks in advance!

Wade

 

[Phoebe Lin]

I wonder if you have heard about Microsoft OneNote? It claims to do the job though I have never used it myself.

http://ukireland.trymicrosoftoffice.com/product.aspx?sku=3082934&culture=en-GB

 

[Robert M. Franz (RMF)]

Hi Wade

Wade Wegner wrote:
[..]

A friend has been writing journals for the last 20 years. He now
finds himself with 30-40 books worth of journals, and he wants to
transfer them out of the books and into digital documents. In
addition to storing them digitally, he also wants to have the ability
to perform full text search and indexing on various topics, so that he
can quickly look things up or find them. For instance, all the
journals written while in Europe might be indexed as Travel, and
Europe, so that they can be quickly looked up and recalled.

He initially thought of paying someone to type them up in Word
documents, but I'm not sure if he'd lose his ability to perform full
text search and indexing.

why "lose" -- the ability isn't there so far, so there's nothing to lose
.... .-)

But anyway, you can of course search in Office files, and your OS should
be able to index them, tll.

Since I'm a custom app developer in .NET
and SQL Server, my first thought had been to create a custom solution,
but the more I think about it the more I don't like that idea.

Does anyone have any thoughts? What is the best way to handle this?

Just a question: those journals are hand-written? So Scanning/OCR is not
an option? Then retyping seems to be a good idea. In what app he does
that is almost immaterial. If we're talking about mostly written body
text, he or whoever types it for him can use practically whatever he
likes. Whether the end result should be TXT, DOC(X), PDF depends on the
requirements more, those should all be search/indexable.

2cents
Robert

 

[Charles W Davis]

Hi Wade

Wade Wegner wrote:
[..]

A friend has been writing journals for the last 20 years. He now
finds himself with 30-40 books worth of journals, and he wants to
transfer them out of the books and into digital documents. In
addition to storing them digitally, he also wants to have the ability
to perform full text search and indexing on various topics, so that he
can quickly look things up or find them. For instance, all the
journals written while in Europe might be indexed as Travel, and
Europe, so that they can be quickly looked up and recalled.

He initially thought of paying someone to type them up in Word
documents, but I'm not sure if he'd lose his ability to perform full
text search and indexing.

why "lose" -- the ability isn't there so far, so there's nothing to lose
... .-)

But anyway, you can of course search in Office files, and your OS should
be able to index them, tll.

Since I'm a custom app developer in .NET
and SQL Server, my first thought had been to create a custom solution,
but the more I think about it the more I don't like that idea.

Does anyone have any thoughts? What is the best way to handle this?

Just a question: those journals are hand-written? So Scanning/OCR is not
an option? Then retyping seems to be a good idea. In what app he does that
is almost immaterial. If we're talking about mostly written body text, he
or whoever types it for him can use practically whatever he likes. Whether
the end result should be TXT, DOC(X), PDF depends on the requirements
more, those should all be search/indexable.

2cents
Robert
--
/"\ ASCII Ribbon Campaign | MS
\ / | MVP
X Against HTML | for
/ \ in e-mail & news | Word

My brother has a similar opportunity. With 45 years of daily entries while
at home and travelling through 122 countries, de decided at age 72, to buy
his first computer. He bought Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing. At the present
time he has progressed very well and is typing 45 words per minute.

After six months, he is now in the sixth year and gaining speed.

His recommendation. Don't start unless you are committed to finishing.