Organization Monkey

i have trouble sometimes figuring out which is the final version of a manuscript that i’ve submitted.  usually by the time i get to the final version i am so tired of looking at the manuscript that i drag it into some folder and wave goodbye.  this is fine until i need to find that file again, which usually has “_final” in the file name…unless i’ve forgotten to add it.  as fanatical as i am about organizing things, you’d think i’d have come up with an awesome system for wrangling these files.  well, now i have.  i will drag a final pdf copy into itunes.

yes, it really works.  i saved the file as a pdf and dragged it from my hard drive into my itunes library.  the copy resides in the music folder of the library.  there i added myself as the artist, the journal title as the album, create a genre named “manuscript”, and in the comments i put the title of the article.  i can even give the articles a rating, but giving my own articles 5 stars seems a little conceited :).  presto, organized.  i can sort by artist (kennedy) and it pulls up all of my files.  i can double click on the file name and it opens the document in a pdf reader.

nb: this doesn’t work with powerpoint, word, or excel files, just pdf.

thanks a million to dr. dobb’s portal for the idea.

sorted by Artist