Adekvat & NotEasy
Adekvat Adekvat
Hey, let’s tackle the problem of building a knowledge base for a research lab that needs to handle everything from quick notes to deep literature reviews—what’s the most logical folder structure you’d start with?
NotEasy NotEasy
I’d start with a clean, three‑tier tree: a root “Research Lab KB”, inside that a “Notes” folder for quick thoughts, a “Literature” folder for full papers and reviews, and a “Projects” folder for ongoing work. Under “Notes” keep subfolders by date or topic, under “Literature” split by year or source (journals, conferences), and under “Projects” create a folder per project with subfolders for drafts, data, and references. That gives a simple, expandable skeleton that lets you drill down without getting tangled.
Adekvat Adekvat
That’s a solid baseline. To keep the structure consistent, I’d add a few small tweaks. 1. Make every folder name singular and capitalized—“Note” instead of “Notes”, “Literature” stays, “Project” instead of “Projects”. 2. Inside each project folder, create a universal “Metadata” file that lists the project lead, start date, and primary keywords. 3. Use a simple naming convention for files: for papers, start with the year and a short identifier, like “2024_IEEE_Tutorial.pdf”. 4. For quick notes, keep a master “Notebook.txt” that logs everything with timestamps; then archive the dated notes as PDFs after review. That way, every new addition follows the same pattern and you avoid ambiguity later.
NotEasy NotEasy
Nice tightening. I’d just flag the “Notebook.txt”—if you’re already archiving PDFs, a plain‑text master log can get messy fast. Maybe switch that to a lightweight database or a spreadsheet that auto‑tags the files it points to. Keeps the tree tidy without a paper trail that you have to sift through every time.
Adekvat Adekvat
I agree—switching the master log to a spreadsheet makes sense. Set up a sheet with columns for file name, path, date added, and tags. Use a macro or a small script to append a row automatically whenever a new file is dropped into any folder. That keeps everything searchable and removes the need for a bulky text log.