I began clipping newspapers and magazines in 1965. In 2000, I stopped reading printed materials. I was Web-dependent.
I had 14 filing cabinets, four drawers each, with maybe 75 hanging files in a drawer. I could usually retrieve an article within five minutes. I remembered the key word for the file.
In 2005, I packed those files into about 150 labeled boxes. I put them in storage.
In 2008, I moved them to a local think tank. I never unpacked them. They were in a storage room. In 2012, someone tossed out those boxes. No one knew who did it or why. I lost 35 years of research.
That bugged me, but not much. My memory was not what it was in 2000. I was in final output mode as a writer: books based mainly on other books with broad themes, not on articles with narrow themes. But some research outfit missed out on a great collection.
What if Evernote had existed in 1965? I would have had all those articles online, all searchable by several keywords of my choice. I could have retrieved anything in one minute.
This is what researchers can do now. They escape the annoying effects of memory loss, which begins by age 45. Multiple keywords also let a researcher find the exact article. The process of elimination takes a minute.
This digital legacy can be transferred at death or retirement (another word for death).
Evernote is free. You should use it.
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