Drowning in research? If you are ever faced with reading hundreds of journal articles you’ll know how confusing and debilitating a paper avalanche can be. Even if you just need to move that pile of paper off your desk, but never find them back if you digitize them, then here is a trick for you!

Pause the music, and skip to your ‘document play list’ in iTunes instead.

If you love how easily you can find one of your 20.000 songs in iTunes by simply browsing a playlist, selecting a mood or genre or searching by keyword, think of how much time you would safe by organizing your documents in the same way. Now you can! iTunes is actually a very handy PDF organizer too, and it doesn’t cost you any extra hard drive space to find all your receipts, research, articles or any other document you can think of.

All you need to do, is convert any and all documents you want to organize in iTunes to PDF files. This is easy and fast if you have a Mac, but even Windows users can benefit with countless (free) PDF writers available on the web.

If you are converting hard copies into PDFs (very handy to make sure you get all your receipts and deductions filed for next year’s tax season), then you will also need a scanner.

To keep PDFs separated from your music files, here is what you need to do:

• Create a separate iTunes library for your documents:

  To create a separate iTunes library, hold down the ‘Option’ key on a Mac, or the shift key on Windows while you open iTunes. A dialogue window will pop up, from which you will select ‘create new library’:

  
• Now, name your document Library:
  

Technically, you are done setting up your new library. You can now just drag and drop PDFs into it. But, before you do… here are a few productivity tips to keep your hard drive clean, and your files perfectly organized:

• By default, iTunes copies all files you drag and drop into a library to the iTunes library folders. This means you end up with two copies of the same file; one in the original folder where you stored it, the other is placed in the iTunes library. To avoid this, you need to go into the iTunes preferences and select the ‘advanced’ tab, where you uncheck the following options: “Copy files to iTunes Music Folder when adding to library” and “Keep iTunes Music folder organized.”
• To avoid dealing with a bunch of empty fields under the ‘artist’, ‘album’ and ‘last played’ lists, just remove them by right clicking the the column header and unchecking all of these options. Because PDF files are not music files, all of these fields will be left as ‘unknown artist/album’ by default. You can use them to organize your files, but an easier way to do this is to use smart play lists.

Set up Folders

To file several related ‘playlists’ in one folder (for example: taxes 2006, taxes 2007, etc, can be filed in one central ‘taxes’ folder), simply click on File -> “new folder” -> a new folder is added to the playlist field, and you can rename it:

Setting up a smart playlist

You should use smart playlists to organize your files, for the simple reason that once you name them and drop them into your library, they are automatically added to the correct folders (i.e. playlists). This cuts back on lost time dragging and dropping hundreds of files one by one into the correct playlist, and although we all like to think we are perfect… it’s too easy to miss a file with this archaic strategy. Here is how it’s done:

1. Select “new smart playlist” from the file menu:
   
2. Select the correct parameters (as below) and enter a keyword. This will be the same of the smart playlist as well, and any documents that contain this keyword in their file name will automatically be added to the smart playlist. So, every time you upload a new reference document you want to file under ‘guidelines’, make sure the file name contains this keyword and it will automatically be added to your ‘guidelines’ folder:
   

Why use iTunes as a document organizer

Like any other productivity system: it depends on your personal preferences and organizational style to determine whether using iTunes as a PDF organizer makes sense. However, here are some major benefits beyond just saving your PDF files in document folders on your hard drive:
instead of replacing document folders, iTunes works as a complement. You still have to store files in document folders, but iTunes just helps you find them much faster. It is useful if your documents can be organized in several folders at the same time, as you can just add the same document to several playlists, without having to physically copy it (and thus lose hard drive space). This makes it easier to retrieve your files, and keep them organized and accessible, without restructuring your entire hard drive and regular filing system. Basically, instead of surfing from document folder to document folder, you can have all PDF files easily accessible in one place. It cuts down on search time, and decreases the chances of forgetting about a crucial document in your research or reference system.