What Educational Users are saying about askSam...

"I am a historian of the U.S. Civil War and Reconstruction period.  I use askSam to keep and search notes on various research projects (four at the moment).

The speed and power of the askSam search facility is the main benefit.  WordPerfect cannot approach it.  I have several megabytes of notes on one project, and finding just the right note or reference would be almost impossible (or at least very inefficient) without askSam.

Any research historian has the same problem of trying to manage mountains of textual material.  A word processor can collect the material, of course, but searching it for keywords, phrases, dates, etc., requires something much more powerful than a word processor.  I imagine that scholars in English, foreign languages, and the social sciences would also find askSam very helpful."

Richard Lowe, University of North Texas

"I use askSam to keep track of the multitudes parts and replacements that my lab uses, details of maintenance on equipment, reminders to reorder outdated chemicals, notes of lab processes, maintenance reminders (like change the oil etc.), company names and things they stock, part numbers, phone log, and more.

The most common solution, and the one the is easiest to impress people with is best illustrated with an example:  A student comes to me and asks where to find another 'nitrogen blow off gun with ionizer attachment' , I last bought these maybe 4 years before, I think I bought two extra - so I look the item up in my database, discover I ordered 6 and used 4, then used another one 2 years ago, and the remaining one should be on 'the bottom shelf of the grey cabinet in the Hitachi SEM room'.  I find it and give it to the student and then order 2 more spares, using the original ordering information from 2 years ago.  The order gets placed in a field so that I can keep track of outstanding orders, then when it comes in I can show that I received it and where I stored it.

Before I started using askSam the normal course of events would have been to look through several cabinets for 20-30 minutes because 'I think I remember there is one around here somewhere' then give up.  Then spend 20 minutes tryng to locate the company that I  purchased it from, 20-30 minutes trying to figure out the exact part number, and another 10-60 minutes keeping track of the order and figuring out where to store the part. And of course a day or a week after getting it in I will find the one that I did have laying around somewhere."

Mark K. Mondol, MIT Research Lab of Electronics

"I use the program in a variety of ways. But for my academic uses I use it primarily to keep track of bibliographies and research notes. This allows me to keep track of which articles and books I have, need to get at the library, need to order, need to read, etc. And for a large book project I am working on it is essential for helping me keep track of some 4000 references. For that latter purpose (which accounts for 75% of my academic use) I need to have a program that produces nicely formatted bibliographies.

All scholars and researchers have the same problem of how to keep track of a huge amount of information. For the most part we don't have the time even to find what has recently been published let alone get it and read it. askSam doesn't help with the time problem but it does help with keeping track of things so time is used more efficiently."

David J Schneider, Rice University

"When I'm teaching, I keep tutorial notes on my students after each session.  In this way, I have ongoing documentation of how they are doing to support my evaluations. Student Notes

Currently I am the chair of our medical school admissions committee.  I use askSam to log any contacts with applicants - to record what was said etc.  We have also developed a telephone questions support tool for the admissions office so that we have more uniform answers to the routine questions.  Makes the process a bit easier to defend if necesssary.  Also I have a running history of all contacts with the applicants.  Contact with applicants - history of contacts with applicants.

I use it for my 'issue manager'.  I keep track of all the 'issues' I'm dealing with at any time, with a template and pick lists so I can bring up those items that I have to do, or that are pending information from someone else etc.  Allows me to keep on top of projects, set due dates and check to see when things are past due etc.

People at universities deal with information.  And the more easily they can store and access that information, the more they can play with it to create newly discovered relationships or ways of looking at things, the better.  Students should be taking their notes and collating them, sifting them to link material from different courses together.  askSam should help them see relationships between different course contents, ideas, different ways of looking at the same problem - but their paper notes, kept in discrete folders or binders, do not lend themselves to this kind of synthesis.  Keeping notes in askSam with its text searching facility, should."

Dr. Michael Marrin, McMaster University

"The USMTR/NAFTA Information Center subscribes to about 50 major newspapers, and scan Selected NAFTA / Trade related Articles, proofread and the put into an AskSam Database for use on Campus by Faculty and Students.

There's also an Online edition of our database which contains Articles from those publications that have given us permission to use their articles."

Carlos Santillan, Texas A&M International University

"I keep a list of examination questions - numbering several thousand.  I can select the questions I want to use, and have askSam  export them to WordPerfect where I do the final formatting.  I can't use askSam  for Windows because it does not have the capability of numbering the questions.

I have started to keep records of the articles I read, with my notes on them,  in askSam for Windows.  It is very easy to find things, even if I don't  remember anything specific about the article.  I just look up a word which I  think may appear somewhere in the title or my summary, and quickly scan  throught he retrieved material.  I should add in this regard, that comments I  have seen suggesting the availability of templates for exporting citation information is a really good idea."

Bruce Hirsch - University of Pennsylvania