Throughout my schooling i always used 3-ring binders. I loved being able to keep things in chronological order, and liked my handouts and papers and notes to be all in one place. I wasn’t a notebook and folder kind of gal, i was the 3-ring and hole punch kind.
I used binders for classes, scripts, projects, activities- everything. That is, for everything *until* i moved into industry. It seems the second i got a “real job” i forgot about the usefulness of 3ring binders. That, and since more and more things were born-digital, i had a hard time justifying all that printing and physical copies. [insert snarky comment from the archivist bf about when “my world” (the digital one) crumbles]
In the last few months I’ve started rekindling my love for binders in an attempts to get a handle on all the different projects i have to keep track of but still find myself unable to marry well enough, or at least to my preference, the accessible anywhere, eco friendly born-digital material and the ever-so-handy, visual nature of the binder organization.
I’m a very visual person and I like having everything in one place. It’s hard to have emails, files, notes, etc in a folder on your computer- it doesn’t mesh with how i think and isn’t very handy for quickly putting your hands on something when all you remember is “blue pen, bottom right side of left hand page, note about something important.”
I’ve decided what i need is a virtual binder. NOT a folder full of files on a desktop or local intranet, but an actual binder that i can flip through the pages of, reorder as i want, and zoom in to see more clearly what it is i’m looking at. Sort of like The British Library’s Turning the Pages goes project management.
So- does anyone have any ideas on how to solve this problem?