Evernote is an amazing FREE application that could change the way you record, store and retrieve your data, in the lab as well as at home. The idea behind Evernote, as shown on the right, is to allow you to capture all of your ideas and put them into your personal database on Evernote’s servers so that you can retrieve them later, when you need them.
What’s so good about Evernote?
This is a reassuringly simple idea, but the thing that makes Evernote so special is that the developers have put a lot of effort into making it really easy to capture and retrieve your data, no matter where you are (as long as you have an internet collection). Evernote for PC and Mac sit right there on your main computer waiting for you to drop in or retreive a piece of information as you work. Evernote web allows you to add or retrieve info from your database from any internet connected computer and the mobile versions (currently only for IPhone, IPod Touch and Android devices) let you capture notes and send them to your database while you are on the move.
Put this together and you have a fantastically versatile and powerful system that lets you keep your info organised in a way that was never possible before. For scientists, that is a boon.
Data capture has never been so flexible
I won’t go through the ins and outs of how to use Evernote as that has been covered elsewhere. A good place to start is on the Evernote website itself, where they have a great collection of videos that explain the whole thing.
What I do want to highlight is that the one thing that makes Evernote particularly useful for me is the variety of methods you can use to capture your data. Typing in your ideas to a new Evernote note, clipping a screenshot of a web article or PDF you have been reading to a note are the bread and butter ways, but Evernote also has a built in features that allows you to capture and send images taken with your webcam or (I/android) phone, or even record audio clips, and send them straight to your database.
When you add a new note to your database you can assign it to a project folder and tag it with keywords and text to make it easy to retrieve later. So with a bit of creativity, its easy to fit Evernote into your daily workflow and make your life much easier!
Here are some ideas on how scientists could use Evernote:
1. Capture figures, tables and important passages from papers as you read them. Now you don’t need to search through the whole paper to find the important parts, just go to your Evernote database and search for the topic you are interested in. You can also capture useful information from websites in the same way.
2. Record ideas on the fly. You are sitting at the computer or, even on the bus to work, and you have brainwave. No need to get your notebook out, just make a voice recording or a quick text note and send it to your database to pick up later whenever you want it.
3. Store links to useful websites and categorise them according to your projects. If a website or page is only relevant to a very specific part of your work, you don’t need to clutter up your browser bookmarks with it, just paste the URL into Evernote store it in the relevant project folder.
4. Easily capture your results in the lab. Gels, stains, blots even traces on the monitor of the clapped-out computer that runs the spec can all be photographed and instantly stored in the relevant project folder.
5. An instant protocols database. Whenever you receive or write a new protocol, you can use Evernote to create a database that will help you find it later. If it’s in electronic format, just paste the text in but if it is a hard copy you just need to take a photo. For an added touch of amazingness, if someone is giving you some advice on the protocol, why not ask them if you can record what they are saying, then clip the audio file to the protocol note for later reference?
6. Your work in the news. If your field of work (or even your actual work) is reported in the press then you could take clips of webpages, photos of newspapers etc to build a collection that will help you stay up-to-date with what is being reported about your work.
7. Take less notes at lab meetings. Just photograph and database the whiteboard. Remember, when you make the note containing the photograph you can tag it with keywords and enter text to say exactly when and where the lab meeting was.
8. Conferences to go. When you are attending a conference, create a folder for that conference and use Evernote to record all of the info you get from it. If you are at a talk, you could use your mobile device to record what the presenters are saying and photograph key slides. Just make sure you get the speaker’s permission first. If you take notes in a notebook, there’s no need to let them sit on the shelf gathering dust — just snap a photo of the most relevant pages, tag with key words and add them the conference folder. The same goes for posters — just ask the person who made it if you can take a photo. When you get home it will all be waiting in your database.
9. Business cards and info leaflets. What do you do when someone gives you a business card or leaflet with some useful info on it? I used to store them in a drawer somewhere and hope I’d remember where they were when I needed them. Now I just take a quick photo and store it in my Evernote database. Much less clutter!
As I mentioned before Evernote is completely free. There is a premium version available that has some more features that you might want to check out, but the free version is excellent. To get started with Evernote, click here.
Rather annoyingly, I can’t come up with a 10th idea for a use of Evernote for scientists at the moment. Can you suggest one?
Also, if you use Evernote, or if you try it out, let us know what you think about it.
You left out my favorite lab use of Evernote: Capture your scribbles. I know I’m not the only one who uses paper towels to hastily note down the order of samples, to make quick calculations, write down concentrations, work out volumes of enzyme for a restriction digest …
Take snapshots of those paper towels and dump them into Evernote (I have a notebook just called “Scribbles”) and then you can update your lab notebook properly. OR even if you don’t use them to update your notebook, you can go back and remind yourself exactly how you made the digest next time around.
Because of Evernote’s scribble-OCR, the scribbles are actually computer-searchable (with lots of errors, admittedly, especially for the more scribbly scribbles).
Ah, great. I forgot about capturing scribbles but I didn’t know that scribbles searchable.
Like I mentioned on twitter, I find Evernote is great for keeping track of any bioinformatics work you do. I primarily use Evernote on my PC, so I often use it to capturing BLAST results (I am constantly re-searching things on BLAST because I never print the results!).
Evernote also makes a good to-do tracker. I have a notebook in Evernote specifically for to-dos, and in it a “Current to-do” note and archive notes labeled by month and year. You can make ticky-boxes by hitting Ctrl-Shift-C, so I put all my weekly to-dos in the “current to-do” note, then copy-paste them weekly into the appropriate growing monthly archive note. That way I have a current rotating to-do list, as well as archives of my old to-do lists. If you make your to-do lists sufficiently detailed, you can even search them later (for instance by plasmid or protein name or “westerns” or whatnot).
One thing to consider is that you may be violating the rules and regulations of your academic institution and/or funding source(s) by using Evernote on the web. By uploading the information, you may be transferring rights to that information to Evernote. My former university did not allow this type of off-site storage, to Evernote or other web-based locations.
As far as this type of software goes, I have been using Microsoft OneNote for the exact same purpose for over five years, and most of my former labmates also adopted OneNote once I introduced them to it. It made collaborating easier and more efficient. I haven’t tried Evernote, but the fact that it’s free is very tempting.
One last comment: there’s nothing better than being able to search through several years of graduate and post-doctoral notes in a matter of seconds to find exactly what you need!
Thank Nick. This Evernote application will replace my database systems online. I’ll give a try on this. Thanks.
“Rather annoyingly, I can’t come up with a 10th idea for a use of Endnote for scientists at the moment. Can you suggest one?”
Did you mean EverNote by any chance?
Yes, I did mean Evernote. I edited out several instances of “Endnote” in the text of that article (force of habit). I can’t believe I missed the last one. Thanks for pointing it out.
Guys,
I am using Scribbly, that is also a great and simple application with Adobe AIR. You should have a look here
http://www.adobe.com/cfusion/marketplace/index.cfm?event=marketplace.offering&offeringID=15420
Cheers,
SAM
@EngineeringDoc
Same here: we use OneNote