My new laptop finally arrived today – hurrah! I’m using it to blog this right now, in fact. It’s a week delayed after the couriers continually messed up. It was the usual story of lying that a card had been left after finding nobody home, when in fact I’d been in all day and there was no evidence of any card. Ah well, at least it’s here. I’ve now got the fun part of installing Firefox and all the other extra goodies. After much research I’ve decided to use Zotero to take care of all my referencing and note-taking needs. My aim is to have suitably tagged notes for all of my MA seminars stored using it, as well as references. I haven’t decided yet whether to take notes directly to laptop or to write them longhand then go through a process of summarising them onto PC afterwards. Learning-wise I’d probably do better with the latter but part of my dilemma stems from the fact that I’ve been away from higher education so long that I’ve no idea whether it’s the done thing to take a laptop into seminars these days… it was unheard of in the late 1990s, if only because no undergraduates had one. Even the concept of referencing software has been an education for me. I didn’t realise anything like EndNote existed until recently. A PhD-in-computer-science, computer-game developing friend has also been trying to persuade me to use LaTex for essays and the eventual dissertation, but I don’t think I’m that hardcore… yet.
Posting here may be sparse over the next few weeks for the excellent reason that I’m getting married next weekend! Between organisation, the day itself and honeymoon my time will be rather limited. We’re off to the Scillies for the honeymoon after the event itself taking place in Cornwall near Falmouth. The crusty antiquarian in me is still head over heels delighted that the church we’re tying the knot in dates back to the fifth century – nothing left of the fabric save for a celtic cross in the grounds but there is something that bowls me over about saying vows in a place where people have been doing the same for over 1500 years. I then have two days after getting back from honeymoon before the induction evening for my MA. I can’t wait to get started and I’ll be blogging fairly regularly as I go through the first term’s course (which is a general introduction to key early modern themes and issues).
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15 September 2007 at 8:55 pm
Matt
I, too, am about to start an MA in history, and have also been thinking about using LaTeX for future dissertations and essays. A relative of mine who did a computer science PhD used it to do his thesis and lent me the book LATEX: A Document Preparation System: User’s Guide and Reference Manual, which was useful. I am quite tempted to use the language academically, but have no idea how to format bibliographies in the required humanities style. I can’t help thinking that learning LaTeX would be more time-consuming than simply typing up references ‘manually’…
Another coincidental similarity is that I have also bought a new laptop recently, though fortunately Dell and their deliverers managed to make the computer turn up on the day they said it would, and I have had no problems so far. Regarding laptop usage in MA seminars and classes, during my undergraduate degree I often had classes with small groups of people, and in these situations I hardly made any notes because it was more about the discussion and self-expression rather than taking down large amounts of factual data. I don’t think a computer would be necessary when one sheet of A4 every two hours will suffice. But then, in a situation when a lot of complex note-taking needs to be done, I think a computer would be both useful and socially acceptable.
Nice blog by the way!
17 September 2007 at 11:17 am
christhomps84388
I have just come across your blog and enjoyed reading it. It is more interesting than mine. As far as ensuring that you keep good records of seminars, conference papers and informal conversations you may have, may I suggest using a handheld recorder of the kind used in offices to dictate letters. I own a couple made by Olympus with tapes that run for 90 minutes on each side: this timespan is usually long enough for most seminar papers, One does need the agreement of the person giving the paper or presiding over the seminar but I have not been refused permission when I have asked. Such practices are common in conferences and seminars held by mathematicians and physicists.