Textual coordination 1.6: Pdfs

The nice thing about electronic journals is their instantaneity. I'm able to get hold of much of the literature I need at a moment's notice. And I can download it as a .pdf. Now, I've got a bunch of reading to do on the rhetorical concept of techne.

Because I've only got a cheap printer at home, I'm having a go at doing all my reading and note-taking on-screen. There's a reason for this. I'm trying to eliminate the double process of my old work process (read and annotate printed documents, then sit in front of the computer with them and "type up" my notes") and go directly to note-taking in the target environment -- digital -- essentially enabling me to "write" sections of my dissertation by copy/pasting from my copious notes. I've even gone so far as to write my notes in "sentence" form, so they may be more easily assembled:

Dubinsky argues that "knowing how" is a reflective and contingent kind of rhetorical knowledge that differs from "knowing 'how to'" (131).

One difficulty I've run into is managing my document views. The actions I need to perform (reading several articles in a particular sequence and moving back and forth between articles to compare points) aren't easy given a limited screen size and clunky way of moving amongst several documents. I've got four down, seven to go. We'll see how long this madness lasts.

Not the easiest way to coordinate texts.