Can Zotero be used as notecards/flashcards?

mortenjensen

Hi all,
I am looking for a program that runs in Mac that can be used for taking notes in a notecard system. I am not sure that this is the right English word. I am not thinking of a note system like OneNote, excellent for taking notes at classes and such. Rather, in old days a millennia ago or so, a researcher would collect references, thoughts, ideas and the like on notes stored in small, black boxes, categorized alphabetically. It enabled her og him an easy way of looking up material stored for later use.
I am thinking of a simple database with an entry for "subjects" and an entry for "note".
In windows there is a program called Library Master that offers such a feature. It is really fast and I have stored tons of material in this program. I have been using it for a while in Fusion but am looking for a true mac alternative.
I have not been able to get Zotero to do exactly this. The database for note-taking should be much more simple and there should be a list view as well as an entry view.
Is this possible?
Or does anyone know of another program that does this? Evernote is not good since i laks a proper list view.
Thanks,
Morten

bwiernik

Sure you can add both notes that stand alone and notes that are attached to specific books, articles, etc. You can search, tag, and add relations between notes. With the Zotfile plugin, you can also automatically extract annotations and highlights from PDFs as notes.

See here for some tips for using Zotero for this type of note taking https://www.chronicle.com/blogs/profhacker/taking-better-notes-in-zotero/36561

mortenjensen

Thanks! The way I understand it, the writer admits that he had to change his way of doing "index cards". The "normal" way is to have individual cards indexed by tags. A list view ensures a fast overview and search should be done simply by typing a word or parts of a word.
If I understand this correctly, the suggestion here is to use Zotero as a workaround. You create an entry or a folder under which you store notes.
I would prefer to have notes sorted only by tags.

I currently have some 4,000 index tagged index cards, and I am looking for a mac program to import them into.

I am thinking of something like a "reduced" dataset in Zotero, where all you have for each entry is "tags" and "notes". Then a list view for overview and easy sorting and searching.

Would this be possible?
Morten

bwiernik

Standalone notes are items like anything else—you can tag them, search their content, or store them in folders as you like. The “change” the author was talking about was adding standalone notes rather than attaching them to the book or article items.

You might consider using a dedicated note app. Something like DevonThink, Scrivener, or Archive might be good for you. If you want to connect your notes to Zotero items, you can use the Zutilo plugin to copy “Zotero select” links that will open your library to that item when clicked.