American philosopher, John Perry, identified two types of organisational thinking. Vertical organisers tend to to work on one task at a time, with an uncluttered surface and make good use of filing cabinets and (in a computer sense) hierarchical folders. Traditional bookmarking sites favour vertical thinking.
By contrast, horizontal organisers like all their projects spread out in front of them so everything is close to hand. The approach is used as a memory aid to keep track of project status, and as a prompt to carry out tasks. More modern bookmarking sites, such as PearlTrees, are better suited to horizontal organisers* from: OUCS (2011) Reserach Information Managment: Organising Humanities Material. Oxford University Computing Service, Oxford.
I think I'm a horizontal organiser. Multi-tasking on a very cluttered work surface is the way I tend to work. Have investigated some of the book marking sites such as PearlTrees and CiteUlike (see earlier posts), but haven't felt that they are currently of use to the tasks I carry out on a
day-to-day basis. However, it's introduced them to me as I wasn't aware they existed before so that is a great step forward.
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