Best way to manage quotes?

[headbishop 3]

I've been unable to find an answer to this: what is the best way to manage quotations in Evernote?
What method will work best for being able to save and search hundreds, perhaps thousands, of quotes? These are quotes that I save for public speaking (not for academic research purposes) or just because I like them. I have perhaps a couple hundred of them now (in a list) but will add hundreds more over time.Thanks 

 

Should I:

1) create a note for each quote and then tag the note, or

2) have one "Quotations" note that I append each quote to as I acquire them, or

3) another option that is better?

 

Thanks for any suggestions or links (I really have looked for them!).

 

John

 

[C6REW 416]

Hi John and welcome to the forum,

 

Not sure if you realised but you had put the same thread on 4 times. I have deleted the other 3.

 

To answer your question I will tell you what I do in terms of using Evernote for a diary.

 

Every day I create a new Note inside a Notebook called (for this year) 'Diary - 2014' 

This Note is called (for today) 140215 - General

As a call comes in from a customer I will type in the Note and add any other information as necessary. At the end of every event I add a tick box. Once all the boxes have been ticked the Note is moved to another Notebook called 'Diary - 2014 Completed'

 

If an email enquiry comes in that will be transferred into Evernote and  have it's own Note created in the Diary Notebook. So if 'John Smith' of 'XYZ Chemicals' sent an email the Note would be called '140215 - XYZ Chemicals - John Smith' 

Again, everything that happens with that enquiry goes in the Note. So if I contact a supplier, or the supplier contacts me, a copy of every email. As a matter of interest, information from me is in red, customer in green and supplier in purple. Again there is a tick box which once completed the Note moves to the completed Notebook.

 

The point of giving you all this detail, is that I have now noticed several years after using the process that I find it easier to look back if I have created a separate Note for every event. It allows me to easily track older information and perhaps link an old Note to a new one.

 

In your scenario I personally would create a new Note for every Quote you come across. Name it well - all mine start with a date code as described above. If you then have different categories you can add 'tags' for those.

 

Hope that helps.

 

Best regards

 

 

Chris

[headbishop 3]

Thanks, Chris, for the ideas--and for deleting the three dupes! When I first tried to post this I received an error message and thought I had not been successful. That's what I get for "thinking."

 

Very helpful--

[GrumpyMonkey 4,320]

Thanks, Chris, for the ideas--and for deleting the three dupes! When I first tried to post this I received an error message and thought I had not been successful. 

 

Very helpful--

Hi. Like notecards in the physical world, a new note for each one. Tag them with keywords for organizational purposes, if needed. Also, don't forget about note-links and the table of contents feature! I have some screencasts showing this on a Mac.

http://www.christopher-mayo.com/?p=488

[headbishop 3]

Great stuff, Christopher. I've enjoyed your website before. Thanks--

[Analyst444 182]

headbishop - I'd suggest you've got the cart before the horse. The 2 specific options you listed in your original post on this topic addressed the issue of "where" to place the quotes ("All in One Note" or "One Note for Each" quotation. I would think that making it easy and fast to find a quotation when you need it is more important. --- This is where EN's powerful search function will serve you well. You can search by key word(s) or Tags. ---- So now, the issue becomes which approach is better. - - - I, too, save quotations in EN. I use key words and not Tags. Why? For a couple reasons:

• When I add a quotation, I'm not sure how I might want to search for it 2 years from now when I want it. Quotations have a thousand different topics and a thousand different authors. The ability to search by key word means I have, effectively, thousands of Tags.
• It's faster. I don't have to manage Tags nor think about what Tag(s) I might want to apply to each quotation as I add it to EN. 

I can't think of an advantage that using Tags would have over using key word(s). Maybe someone else who monitors this forum can come up with one. (I take that back. I thought of one. If you use Tags, you could sort quotations by Tags in EN's "List" view and perhaps see a handful of quotations that might meet your current needs. Of course, then the alphabetical sequence you enter the Tags becomes important.)

 

Now, in terms of how do you structure the quotations ("All in One Note" or "One Note for Each"?). I think this gets down to two issues for you to wrestle with:

• How important is the ability to see a list of quotations in EN's "List" view? If very important, then "One Note for Each" is the way to go.
• If you're using the free version of Evernote, then its limitation on the size of a Note or on the # of Notes may dictate which way to go. The limits are pretty high, but you will need to make a call on this.

 

As with most Evernote organizing questions posted in this forum, I suggest you try a couple different approaches on a small scale and figure out what works best for you. 

 

I hope you feel this response is helpful.

[headbishop 3]

Thanks, Analyst444. I will give this some more thought. 

[Don Sakers 98]

I have a separate notebook for quotations (I call it "Commonplace Book"). In that notebook, each quotation is in its own individual note.

 

By temperament I'm not much of a tagger; I tend to put keywords in the note title if they don't appear in the actual quotation.

[headbishop 3]

Thanks, Don. I ended up with too many tags, so this is a great idea.

 

John