Creating a Personal Current Events Catalog

Last week I was reading a blog post by Meredith Farkas (who you all should follow!) titled The Changing Professional Conversation. This post is about how difficult it is to recall conversations done through microblogging and status/RSS feeds (think Twitter, Blogs, Google+ or Facebook).

This got me thinking about an antidote a preaching professor told my class nearly 10 years ago. What he explained to the class was a filing system he developed for keeping track of current events and stories he wanted to save from the local newspapers. He told the class that every morning he sat down with the paper and a pair of scissors and clipped out stories he found interesting or important. He would then file them in his filing cabinet under particular subject categories. The purpose here was to have at hand sermon illustrations that were pulled straight out of the community at a moments notice.

I thought this was a brilliant idea. However today this practice runs into three problems. First, I don't own a filing cabinet nor do I know anyone who does. Second, nearly 100% of the news I read is done online. Third, a majority of what I read is delivered through aggregators and at times I am unable to recall the direct source of where I read the information. (This was the problem Farkas speaks to in her post.)

So can we create a system to help us quickly retrieve information sent to us through aggregators? I believe we can! Below I'll show you three ways (two online and one offline) to document and file this type of information. (Because I use a Mac these examples will be slanted in that direction. I'm sure there are similar  ways of doing the same tasks using a windows based computer. Feel free to share those in the comment section below.)

To begin with it is important to think about this process at the level of the collection you will create and not at the level of the item. Going back to the filing cabinet idea, it would be better to have 50 folders with different subject categories then to have one or two that act more of a catch all. Your goal should be to crate folders that will catch a maximum of 30 items. With some of these systems you will be able to tag your items with multiple subject categories. When you use a consistent vocabulary for tagging future recall will be a breeze.

First Things First:

The first thing you will need to know is how to find the unique URL of aggregated posts. On Twitter and Facebook this is done the same exact way. Simply click on the time code of the post you are reading.

The image below was taken directly from my news feed on Facebook.

When I clicked on the time code (what the red arrow is pointing to) the post opens as it's own webpage. This will make it easy to file away in your new subject-based filing system.









This works the exact same way on Twitter. Simply click the time code in your Twitter Feed and the Tweet will open as it's own webpage. (See example below)

Saving For Off-Line Use:

Once you have the posts open as it's own webpage you can simply save it to your hard drive for future viewing. I do this in two different ways. First: You can save the page in a Web Archive format by clicking Command+S. When you reopen a file in this format it will look exactly like the original website including clickable links. Keep in mind that the page is being viewed from your hard drive and not from the web which might cause some problems for imbedded links. Another option I use is Command+P, which opens the print window. From here I click on 'save as PDF' (see example below). I'll save pages as PDFs when I want to add annotations to them for future reference, such as highlighting or adding notes. This is especially nice when reading longer articles.

You can save web based e-mails in a similar way. In Gmail you will find the print icon just to the right of the e-mail title. Simply click this icon but instead of printing the page save it as a PDF, as in the above example. Many news websites will also have a "printer friendly" version of their articles. This will allow you to save the content as a PDF without all the advertisements surrounding the article. Just look for the print icon and when the print window opens click "save as PDF".

Now that the files are saved on your hard drive you will need to figure out a system for retrieval. Typically I will create a master folder containing multiple folders within it. Here is where you will need to be creative with your subject categories. These folders will need to be named something broad enough to catch multiple pages you are wanting to save but narrow enough to be unique. Of course you can always rename folders so don't feel stuck if you cannot think of good folder names right away. I'm working on a project right now about QR Codes. Anytime a blog comes through my RSS aggregator I'll save it in the folder I've titled QR Codes.

Cloud Based Filing: Delicious and Instapaper

I call these Cloud Based Filing because you will be able to get access to these files from any computer that is connected to the web. Both of these sites will require you to register an account.

Both Delicious and Instapaper will allow you to archive webpages for future viewing. Both of these websites have shortcut links you can embed into your browser that will let you save websites directly from the page you are currently on, no need to navigate away from what you are currently reading.

Delicious will ask you to 'tag' the item before it is saved. You can think about tags in the same way as folders. As stated above think about your tags on the level of your collection. For example "classic films" would be a better tag then "Casablanca" unless you have a ton of pages about Casablanca. Think about words that will have the potential to group together a maximum of about 30 pages.

Instapaper uses folders to group your saved pages. The difference here is that with Instapaper you will need to go back in and create your folders after you save the page. This adds an extra step. You will want to play around with both websites and choose which interface you like best and which has the most favorable features.

As a privacy reminder, keep in mind that you might be saving Facebook status updates or Tweets that your friends have posted. Resist the urge to post these items in a blog or on a slide presentation without their permission.

Using these tips and manipulating them to fit your online habits can help save you time in the future when you are trying to recall what someone previously posted or a relevant blog for future reading. I'm not advocating for the archiving of your entire newsfeed, but instead showing ways to assist with information recall in the future.