Software Streamlines Online Research

©1999 Virginia Lawrence, Ph.D.

Most writers and publishers do some online research, and some of us do a great deal. As we do our research, we want to save the information efficiently. Using the bookmark option in the browser can help us to retain the addresses of a handful of sites. Of course, the bookmark holds only the addresses, so when we want to view a page again, we must use the address to go to that page online. Then, after several successful searches, the bookmark list in the browser gets unwieldy. Organizing the bookmark list is not a simple project, so how can we organize the important site information we unearth? Even more important, how can we save our research information so that we can later find everything we seek?

Several software companies are now offering a new category of software to help us save and organize our findings into logical groupings. Webforia Organizer, for example, is a recent Windows software offering from Webforia, Inc.

The Webforia Toolbar

When we install Webforia, we get a new toolbar across the top of the Windows screen. The toolbar appears as soon as the PC boots up, and it remains available for use at all times. To use Webforia, we start by opening the Internet Explorer browser as usual. Then we begin the search in our favorite search engine or directory.

Online Research and Clipping Pages

As soon as we find an interesting site, instead of clicking on Bookmark to save the address of the page, we click on the Clip icon in the Webforia toolbar. Webforia immediately grabs the entire page with its graphics, links, and URL, placing everything in the Clip Tray. After clipping the page, we continue on with our research to find more pages with relevant information, clipping each page to be saved.

Organizing the Clipped Pages

When we have finished the current search, we go to the Webforia Clipbar and open the Webforia Organizer. Here's where the fun begins.

We use the Organizer to create a library for the current online research, then we create as many categories as we need within that library. Finally, we drag each clipped page into the appropriate category. At any time, we can link keywords and/or an abstract to these pages.

Using the Clipped and Organized Pages

The libraries with their categories are available for review at any time within Webforia, but that's only the beginning. We have all the information on our own hard drive, and we can retrieve that information. The automatic search feature lets us search one or more of our own libraries using any word which might occur within the pages of interest. For example, we might have many pages on the topic of horse breeding. Within that horse breeding category we can search and find and review any pages mentioning mini horses or Palominos or Arabians or Kentucky or ...

When we find the appropriate page, we can view our saved copy of the page without going online. We can race through the pages to compare and consider their content.

As Webforia says, "It's like having a personal librarian who stores, indexes and tracks the information you select. That means you have more time to think about important things, like actually using and sharing your search results."

Download the free demo from http://www.webforia.com. Test it out. The registered version is $79.95.

~ Virginia Lawrence, Ph.D. is an Information Architect who publishes both in print and online. Contact her at virginia@cognitext.com.