Collecting and Organizing Orthodox Quotes

The work I do requires a fair amount of organization – I have numerous different projects on which I’m working at any given time for different organizations, departments and/or ministries. I’ve therefore developed reasonable (for me) systems of organizing my time, my different projects, the resources for the different projects, and resources (such as Lingo scripts for Director) that I share between projects.

An area in which in the past I tended to fail dismally, however, was in organizing my notes – and particularly quotations – that I use in articles and other documents I write. For some inexplicable reason, when writing I tend to simply have teetering piles of books stuffed with bookmarks on my desk – and a large number of websites bookmarked in my browser – but I often fail to get around to actually putting quotes and citations in some type of database or filing system. Thus, when I need a quote or reference that I used in a previous publication, I need to remember the specific publication, find it, and then read it to find the needed information (and too often I find that I misremembered the publication, forcing me to go through several works until I find the information).

A couple of years ago I decided to begin collecting the quotations I use in an application in which they could be easily located. I began by using a tree-style text editor – and this may still be the best option for many readers – but have since moved on to using a document management application.

TREE-STYLE EDITORS

I first used a tree-style text editor (you can also find them called such things as tree-view information organizers, tree-view PIMs, etc.). When working on the application for the Be Transformed study of Romans, I needed some way of tracking the location of objects on screens, the specific screens on which specific articles and indices appeared, and the location of individual objects (such as specific scripts) from within the cast of several thousand objects that are used in the application.

The free tree-style editor KeyNote (for Windows) served my needs very well: I created nodes for such things as the templates for the different types of screens, and then child nodes for each individual type of screen. Then, when I needed to find the location of an object on a screen, I could simply open the node for templates, and then look at the child node on which I had listed the object locations within that template. I created similar sets of parent/child nodes for articles and for cast members.

If I still used Windows as my primary OS I would still be using KeyNote. I eventually switched to a Mac, however, and I wanted something that would run on my Mac without necessitating the time and resource drain of continually running Windows in Parallels simply so that I could take notes. I eventually settled on Jreepad, a multi-platform application (it requires Java). Jreepad lacks many of KeyNote’s features – particularly the ability to work with rich text (Jreepad uses only plain text) – but it saves files in the same format as the commercial application Treepad (for Windows), and I like the fact that it allows me and others to use the files on both Windows and OS X.

Many readers may prefer Jreepad because, while it’s more limited than KeyNote, it is also significantly easier to use than KeyNote: there are only eight simple commands, each of which has its own button in the application’s toolbar.

DOCUMENT MANAGEMENT APPLICATIONS

Jreepad worked very well for saving relatively short quotations. I increasingly found, however, that there were occasions in which I wanted to simply save entire web pages or PDFs without the difficulty of copying, pasting and reformatting paragraph breaks. What I needed, more than a text editor, was a document manager.

I now use a commercial program for the Mac called DevonThink, which enables me to create folders for each subject, and then within those folders keep a variety of notes (particularly useful is that DevonThink not only works with rich text, but automatically includes hyperlinks within pasted text), web pages, PDFs, etc. Unfortunately, there isn’t a direct equivalent for DevonThink for Windows; I have, however, read that people use AskSam or the free EverNote for similar purposes.

SAVING AND ORGANIZING ORTHODOX QUOTES

The basic process for saving and organizing quotations is very similar whether using a tree-style editor or a document management application: the primary differences are the types of documents that can be saved within the application. For this reason, since both PC and Mac users can use the free Jreepad tree-style text editor, I’ll use it as an example of how you can collect and organize quotations from Church Fathers and modern Orthodox writers. The image below displays the key elements I’ll be discussing.

You’ll start in the organizational tree by naming the main topic to be covered in this file: in my Jreepad file I simply named this topic “Patristic Quotes” (even though I also include modern quotations). Every topic that you will add to this collection will be added by clicking the “Add Below” button.

After creating a node for an individual topic (you can see my continually-growing list of topics in the left sidebar of the above image), you will then add a child to that topic. I organize the “children” of my topics in one of two ways: by subtopic, or by author. A huge topic – like Christ – will have a number of subtopics; a smaller topic – like Jesus Prayer – will probably not have subtopics, and thus the first level of children will be the names of authors of various quotes. Further levels of children can be created as necessary.

To seen an example of this, in the above graphic look at the node for “Jesus Prayer.” In this this file I have only two quotations on the Jesus prayer (from St. John Chrysostom and Elder Joseph); there are therefore only two children for the Jesus Prayer node. I also only have one quote from each of these individuals, and thus there are no children of either the St. John or Elder Joseph node; if I had two quotations from Elder Joseph, then there would be two children of the “Elder Joseph of Vatopaidi Monastery on Mt. Athos” node.

If there is a subtopic that becomes so big that it needs to be made into its own topic, I can simply use the “Out” button to move the node further to the left (which also changes its level in the organizational hierarchy from a “child” node to a “parent” node). Conversely, when I create a topic that I later decide should instead be a subtopic of another topic, then I can use the “Up” button to move the lesser topic’s node directly beneath the node for the greater topic, and then use the “In” button to move the lesser topic to the right (and thereby change it into a “child” of the greater topic).

This is the basic process I use for organizing and saving Orthodox quotations. The specific application commands will be different if you use KeyNote instead of Jreepad (or any other similar program), but the basic organizational strategy you use will be similar.

SOURCES FOR ORTHODOX QUOTES

You can, of course, find many Orthodox quotes in my podcasts, studies and articles (particularly in my daily Orthodox Life Tips podcast, which features a different quotation each day).

There are also many excellent translations of patristic works and modern works from St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press and others that you can obtain from such sources as Conciliar Press, Light & Life and Eighth Day Books. There are also websites with free translations of patristic works: in addition to the Christian Classics Ethereal Library’s public domain collection of The Early Church Fathers, Dcn. Matthew Steenberg’s Monachos site has quite a few translations and articles.