sharing notebooks

[rkirshner 2]

so lets say that i have a trade ,like an electrician. maybe i know lots of little tricks that just are not in books . i would like to write these down somewhere so maybe one of my kids can someday benefit from a careers worth of knowledge . all of the notes are tagged and well titled so the search is easy . but lets also say that i have 2 brothers that are electricians . they also have a ton of practical knowledge . 

so , i tell them to join EN and then i share my notebook with them . they have sharing rights to both read and write . lets say one of my brothers has a good friend that also is an electrician. we can also let him share so we get the benefit of his knowledge .

here is my question , as you start inviting more and more people to share and as the sharing circles get larger and larger is there a way for the original owner of the notebook to maintain control such that new invitees can not be invited unless the original owner approves 

thanks

[gazumped 11,667]

Hi.  Short answer,  no.

 

Longer answer - you can share with read only / read and write / read,  write and invite permissions.  Why not share from the start with read and write permissions,  but with an email / introduction page that includes your email address and an invitation to freely specify someone else's email address to be added to the club. 

 

Adding new addresses is easy and quick,  so not a time-sink for you;  and keeping control of who sees the pages means you don't risk an exponential growth in contributors that overwhelms your editing and management time.

 

If the work gets too much you can stop adding new contributors.

 

(From an editor's perspective - as in been there,  done this in a different speciality - I'd suggest you rewrite all contributions in your own standard style..  everyone will have a different way of expressing their contribution;  pulling all these styles together in one block will highlight the differences.  If your personal style is overlaid on everything,  at least there will be some level of consistency which will [hopefully] make it easier for someone else to read all this stuff...)

[rkirshner 2]

thank you 

so are you suggesting that if any of the members want to invite others that they let me know and i do the inviting?

thanks

[gazumped 11,667]

Hi.  Yes - you can't control who is invited by others if you give them permission to do so;  the only alternative is to keep that privilege to yourself.  The work shouldn't be too onerous unless you imagine that there are dozens or hundreds of others who might contribute - and you could share it with one or more trusted colleagues by extending their permission to invite others,  provided you're sure they will keep to agreed guidelines.

[rkirshner 2]

this answers my question , thank you . i think there will be less than 10 contributors and so i will reserve the power of invitation to my self .

so here is the real story . i am a heart surgeon doing a large volume of cases for years . there are multiple journals and scientific publications that discuss heart surgery but the actual "how to" or "what to do in this situation"really doesn't exist , i am probably within 5 years of retiring ,and have been lamenting that all this particle knowledge will just dissipate. my son is now in med school and wants to become a heart surgeon   . for all of these reasons i wanted to write down some of the things i know . but , as you can tell i cant type and my handwriting is illegible . also i am just not a writer . 

along come evernote . i learn something new almost every case or on every case i have done something that just isnt in books . so now i just open evernote and add a note . i title it appropriately and tag it with as many tags as need be so the compendium is easily searchable 

here is where it gets better . i have 2 brothers that do high volume heart surgery . they are very good at it and they have here own set or 'tricks". so i invite them to EN and teach them how to add their notes and use the tags i have set up . over the next couple of years there will be a notebook full of great ideas or at even just so-so ideas that the future generation will be able to look through as they approach a situation . each of us has maybe one or 2 trusted colleagues that we can invite that will also contribute 

so thats the idea . kind of excited to use this technology to accomplish a goal that i think is worthwhile 

thanks   any ideas how to make it better

[gazumped 11,667]

Wow - that sounds a fantastic gesture from you and your brothers,  and a really worthwhile project - which you don't have to drop when you retire.  I appreciate you won't have the daily experience to update you,  but you'll still have your specialist knowledge and you'll be able to edit and curate the notes for as long as you wish to. 

 

Any knowledge base needs to be easily available to its users,  and you could look to publish something online when you have enough material - Evernote might be willing to help you there given that your project is adding considerable value to their flagship product too,

 

I don't know your audience well enough to recommend a 'style' for your notes - a good format in other professions is to have a descriptive title,  so you can pretty much guess the content from the title;  an 'executive summary' paragraph that goes into more detail but can be read very quickly,  and the full content which should still be as short and to the point as possible,  but cover all the necessary detail.  You might want to involve your son and some of his fellow students here - get them to give you examples of the style of reference material they find most useful.

 

As you're collaborating with others,  you might want to set up a structure so they can add new content without overlapping existing material;  you could set up a hierarchy of tags (tags can be 'stacked' as deeply as you'd like) - in fact you have to set up the tags,  because only the owner of the account can add new ones - others can tag,  but only if they use already existing labels.

 

Main topic 1

    sub-topic A

        sub-sub topic A1... and so on

Main topic 2

 

Note that tagging something with sub-sub topic A1 doesn't attach the other tags by default - if you want to make your content available to searches under all those levels,  you'd have to add tags <Main topic 1> <sub-topic A> <sub-sub topic A1>

 

The reliability of your note platform is of paramount importance,  so please keep regular backups of your work,  and ask everyone to sync their notes regularly and often,  and especially both before they start editing and after they finish.  Someone else might have changed something but not yet updated their note and after you've written 10 paragraphs of insightful guidance it's always annoying is someone else syncs a spelling correction over the top of your work!

 

Hope some of that is helpful - if you have further specific queries please ask;  I'll be glad to help.

[rkirshner 2]

thank you 

why do you stress the back-ups 

doesnt EN do that for you 

[gazumped 11,667]

Backups are essential,  in my view,  when you're dealing with data that may be irreplaceable.  If an accidental erasure of one or more notes,  or a tag,  or a notebook happens on one of the devices connected with the account,  or the data somehow becomes corrupted because of malware on your,  or a colleague's computer,  those errors or deletions will be saved to the copy databases on all the devices connected to the account via the server copy of the database online.  One short synchronisation can undo hours of work. 

 

Evernote does have a note 'history' feature for premium subscribers that can 'step back' a note to a previous stage,  but that's a snapshot taken a couple of times per day, and it's not guaranteed to recover all data.  Plus it can't recover an earlier version of a note is that note has been deleted.  And you're relying on an an external service keeping your data on servers which may be on a different continent.

 

I'm not saying that storing your data on Evernote is a significant risk,  but it seems to me to make sense to have your own local backups on an external hard drive so you always have that reassurance should things go wrong.  (In several years I've never had to restore my database from a backup,  though it has come in handy when moving Evernote to a new computer.)