I think writing comprehensively about DT is hard, partly because its richness is best appreciated through exploration, but also because it’s a database that ends up reflecting your brain, and everyone’s brain is different - organized differently, stimulated differently (I recommend doing the Google image search to see just how different). Simply speaking, it sucks up your research (in all manner of file formats), lets you arrange it however you like, and spits out research connections you mightn’t even think existed. DEVONthink is basically an intelligent database, with an incredibly flexible filing structure, script support, spreadsheet and table/listing support, and comes with not only Spotlight search functionality but inbuilt semantic concordance. The Wikipedia article for DEVONthink doesn’t do it an iota of justice, and actually, even a Google search, apart from the obvious links to the product website and a tantalizing write-up by DT evangelist Steven Johnson, doesn’t do much to entice, and it takes a little digging to get a really good sense of just what the program is capable of. (All are direct offshoots of the First Cause, viz. I can only half blame Marco Polo the remaining culpability must be roughly distributed between (a) manic funding and fieldwork administrative tasks, which I have been less-than-enthusiastically undertaking in preparation for my uncomfortably imminent departure from England at the end of this month (b) the lovely National Archives Kew, which has sucked up most of this week, and (c) DEVONthink, which is all set to usurp my entire brain.
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