Organizing data:  Research Software

I imagined that digging into a community’s past might be daunting. Gathering details about properties and buildings that had been around for more than 100 years, interviewing people, and organizing all of the data would definitely be time-consuming. I am retired, and wanted it to be fun, and that meant getting up in the morning and wanting to work on it - and to not feel guilty if days, even weeks, went without writing a single word. In the long run, it worked best to spend about 4-20 hours per week on the project. This left plenty of porch time.

There are still quite a few buildings in the Main Street Historic District to research and write about. At the time of the web site’s launch in March 2026, eighteen buildings had been completed. There are about 54 buildings or properties within the District. That’s a lot of research.

Software

Software that I used in this project is listed in this section. For some of them, I’ve provided links where you can get the same software. Note that some of the links are affiliate links, which means that even though the price to you is the same as it would be anywhere else, I get a small commission. I didn’t use any of these because of commissions, though. I used them all because they are extremely useful. 

I use a PC running Windows 11. Most, if not all of the software I use is available for Apple computers.

1. pCloud. pCloud provides cloud storage for all of my files. The great thing about pCloud is that it creates a virtual drive on your machine. This means that, just like I have a default C: drive on my PC, I now also have a P: drive. I can copy, paste, drag, and view files on the P: drive just like I can on my local C: drive. The P: drive is a virtual drive because the files aren’t (normally) really on your computer - they are sitting in a mountain somewhere in Switzerland. It’s very secure and is extremely easy to use. It also has an app for my phone so I can access the files and show photos, newspaper clippings, or anything to anyone at any time. 

pCloud has a one-time, lifetime fee. Here’s where you can get it: https://partner.pcloud.com/r/62220

2. Microsoft OneNote. This is the go-to place where I store clippings and notes as soon as I find them. It automatically saves my work as I type, and whatever is stored is available on my other computer or my phone immediately. OneNote is great because it works like a regular, old-fashioned notebook:  your notebooks have sections, tabs, and pages within tabs. Almost anything can be put in a notebook page: images, audio recordings, video, text, drawings, and more. When you search for something, it actually searches all notebook pages - even what is said within audio recordings. I could go on for an hour or more about this wonderful tool for research.  Versions of it are free on the Internet.

OneNote can be downloaded for Windows (free) here: https://apps.microsoft.com/detail/xpffzhvgqwwlhb?hl=en-US&gl=US

3. Scrivener 3.0 for Windows.  A company called Literature and Latte offers this software for writers. It is absolutely amazing, and it’s packed with more features that you’d ever use. Along the left side of the screen is a list of all of your chapters, with sections for Front Matter, Back Matter, Research and anything you want to store. All of my research ended up in a research folder that was set up for each building. When working on a building, you can write in one window while looking at your research material, including PDFs and photos, in another window.  Scrivener charges a one-time fee for its use - no subscriptions.

Scrivener can be downloaded here for macOS, Windows and iOS: https://www.literatureandlatte.com/download

4. Microsoft Excel. When I retrieved a piece of information from a newspaper article or a telephone directory, created a line in my Business Histories spreadsheet. It has tabs to keep lists of all encountered Business Names, various filters, and more. The main spreadsheet has almost 1500 rows in it (I ended up keeping a lot of things in other tables). I can quickly go to this spreadsheet, select a particular business or building, and have it list almost everything I’ve found in chronological order by event date or source date.
   
   

5. Microsoft Sticky Notes. This software lets you quickly pop-up sticky notes to jot down quick notes while working. The notes look just like the yellow, green and purple sticky notes you’ve seen for years - except that they’re on your screen.
   
   

6. SeekFast.  After you give this software the location of a file or directory, it can perform lightning fast searches and return the results based on date, file name, or relevance to your search term. It works fast because it indexes (searches all of the files in advance and puts another file containing data stored in a way that lets it quickly find things) the files. I downloaded all of the past Transylvania County telephone directories into a folder on my PC, then used SeekFast to quickly locate businesses at specific street addresses.  For example, I could type “Chamber of Commerce” and see this (partial listing), which shows one of the Chamber’s relocations:

       Seekfast can be downloaded here:  https://seekfast.org/

7.  Gemini (AI) is a great tool for a lot of things. However, it’s always smart to check its sources when it tell you factual information. I’ve caught it more than once (by its own admission) “hallucinating” - giving me wrong information as though it was a fact. After using other tools for some time, I’ve settled on Gemini for photo restoration and colorization. Some of the photos I’ve done with older tools are still included in this work. I’ll probably go back and rework them with Gemini. If I want to reformat something in the text, Gemini can do in two minutes what it would have taken me 20 minutes to do. I’ll probably feed it the entire manuscript of this project and see if it can generate an index for me.

See https://gemini.google.com/app

8. NotebookLM.  This is another Google AI project like Gemini.  NotebookLM excels in summarizing and presenting data from sources that you provide. I had some fun with it by loading an article (for example, the chapter on Rocky’s) and asking it to generate a podcast. It was really fun listening to two AI-generated podcasters do a whole “radio show” about Rocky’s based on facts presented in the article. I considered providing these as part of the web site. Perhaps it’s something to look at for the future.

See https://notebooklm.google.com/