Organizing What You Find - Information Trapping: Real-Time Research on the Web - page 273

private by default; this is idea for a solo researcher who doesn't want to
share his or her bookmarks even inadvertently.
When you've registered, you'll have the option of importing your bookmarks
as well as generating some general-level folders for organizing your book-
marks. For the information trapper who wants to use these tools to organize
a few diferent topics, most of these folders probably aren't necessary.
here are also other ways to view your pages as well, including looking at
your most popular pages as well as your most recently added pages. Backlip
has a bevy of tools that you can add to your browser to make “backlipping”
pages easily; however, if your browsing isn't proving very inspirational, you
can also check out pages that are being backlipped oten, as well as the
contents of publicly available folders (remember, Backlip bookmarks are
private by default, but there is an option to make them public).
his chapter has covered just some of the solutions you can use to gather,
share, and organize your information. here are lots more. To ind more
resources to experiment with, try searching Google or Yahoo for online
bookmark managers or information organizers.
Sticking to a Strategy
he most important thing is to have some kind of strategy for how you're
going to accumulate your information (and share it if you're working within
a group). Maybe you'll settle on something simple, like the multiple-tab text
editor that I use. Or maybe you need to work with several diferent people
across a huge company, and you need an elaborate solution like TWiki. No
matter what you inally choose, stick with it for at least a month. It takes
that amount of time to develop a habit to save the information as you trap
it. Don't say to yourself, “I'll ind this later,” or “I'll remember where this
is.” I promise you: you won't. Trap as you go. (For what it's worth, I have to
remind myself of this all the time too!)
Accumulating and organizing the information you ind is only the second
step in your three-part process. he irst part is to ind and monitor the
information. he second part is to accumulate and organize it, and the third
part is to reuse and republish it, which we'll look at in the next chapter.