askSam tames the data clutter

By Bonnie Britt

I worked in a newsroom where a clutter-averse assistant managing editor periodically pushed a big trash barrel through the aisles expecting reporters to toss documents. Packrats like me did not share his enthusiasm for a tidier newsroom.

Then I learned about askSam, an archiving and free-form database program that allows journalists to squirrel away information electronically instead of letting it pile up on their desks. The program is a natural friend to journalists, historians, archivists, investigators, and packrats of every stripe.

Using askSam is better then living with paper clutter because nothing gets lost or buried. And, the program does not force you to shoehorn data into fields with set lengths. In fact, you can choose whether or not to import data into fields.

You can search, sort, and sift massive amounts of data (up to 16 terabytes), structured or unstructured, from an array of formats. Its speed and flexibility explain why askSam is popular among intelligence and law enforcement agencies whose personnel often think and work like journalists.

Using it

The U.S. General Accounting Office uses it with other software to collect and organize survey information. Senate investigators pursuing the Iran-contra scandal employed askSam's lightning speed to good advantage in the mid-1980's to ask informed questions of Oliver North in real time. The program enabled them to organize, catalog, and present the volumes of evidence they had gathered during their investigation and subsequent Senate hearings.

A forensic document analyst at the U.S. Postal Inspection Service built a central repository in askSam for all articles relating to death threats sent through the mail, forged signatures, counterfeit passports and related topics.

While askSam is valuable to people who toss unstructured notes into files, then do simple or Boolean searches for combinations of words or phrases, it also offers detailed reports based on field data queries. For example, you can set askSam to automatically recognize e-mail fields such as, To, From and Subject, or you can import e-mail without specifying any field. The database is searchable either way, but if you import e-mail with fields, you can ask for a report on all e-mail, say, from Ken Lay between two dates when the subject contains a particular word or phrase. You can search dates, fields, proximity, or explore numeric values and relationships, or do a global search and replace.

Using a feature that emulates relational databases, you can search across multiple askSam databases to keep track of projects, or to compare statements of public officials over time. The program is easy to use once you've figured out what you want from it, and it's smart enough to adapt for use with Microsoft Access, Excel or Lexis-Nexis.

Why would anyone want to import a spreadsheet into askSam? To more easily view and page through rows; to view it differently so as to spot error; or to query it differently. Viewing a long row

of data in Excel is easier to read when laid out on one page. Each succeeding row can be viewed, page by page, by pressing F9 for next (or ALT-F9 for previous.)

Stories captured from Lexis-Nexis can be searched in a variety of ways, such as for combinations of names, alongside Web pages, stories cut and pasted from today's news, annotated screen shots, and other tidbits gathered and thrown into the mix.

The search results are displayed in a split window that is easy to navigate. The results show the number of hits per document, context, and the first line of data. Click on any row to see the entire corresponding document.

Getting started

Ÿ     To begin using askSam, you would open an empty database, name it and save it. You can immediately begin building a database in any of four ways.

Ÿ     Drop documents into askSam by cutting and pasting them as plain text, or, using the "paste special" option, as HTML or RTF. (Add graphics separately.)

Ÿ     You can import all or some documents, one file type at a time, from a Windows folder. You can set it to import e-mail attachments, or not.

Ÿ     You can link any file in its native program format to askSam.

Ÿ      You can attach a file in any program format to askSam. The difference between linking and attaching will be explained in a few moments.

As with any program with Windows menus, you can adapt each askSam database according to your choice of font, colors and other formatting. HTML and RTF documents will reflect the formatting of their original files; text documents will reflect your choices.

You can also adapt each database to the way you want it to behave, such as where documents are added, how dates are shown, and how and what search results are shown. You can add one or more new documents anywhere, such as at the beginning, after any current document, or at the end of the database.

Linking a file to an askSam database is useful for keeping all file types associated with a working project together and conveniently accessible, including notes, PDF or Word documents, audio/video files and any spreadsheets or other databases. When clicked to open from askSam, the linked file opens the original in its native program, and reflects any changes made to the original, including deletion.

An attached file differs from a linked file in that the attached file becomes a fixed part of the askSam database. There's no reason to keep the original once a file has been attached to askSam. Attached files come in handy in several ways.

Ÿ     You can search the database for attachments only.

Ÿ     You can keep documents in their original form within your database, and can view or print them at will.

The biggest complaint of longtime users is that table columns do not align properly when a document with a table (that is not a graphic) is added. To get around this problem, longtime users first complain bitterly to the company about the flaw, and then they paste columnar text into askSam to facilitate searching.  Users then attach the original document to the database so it can be viewed with columnar data properly aligned. (In such cases, it helps to import "after current document.")

Sharing askSam databases with colleagues is a relatively new feature. At the request of customers, the company, based in Perry, Fla., began offering the free viewer, which is similar in function to the Adobe Acrobat Reader. Colleagues can use the free viewer to read and search (but not add to, or modify) existing databases.

The standard askSam program retails for $149 and is fast enough for importing e-mail, or keeping track of the elements of a nonfiction book or news project. For power users who want more speed and flexibility, there is a professional version, which includes full-text indexing ($395 retail). Indexing speeds the searching of seriously big databases. askSam Professional also includes an ActiveX control that can be accessed from Visual Basic and other programming languages to create customized applications, a feature the GAO uses.

askSam's features include a tool to pack databases to keep them lean. The program allows document deletion and creation, and remembers which documents and searches you've marked for recall.

Formerly a daily newspaper reporter, Bonnie Britt is writing a book about the 1985 crash of a charter DC-8 that took the lives of 248 members of the 101st Airborne and eight crew members. she is reachable through the Bay Area Editors' Forum.

This article appeared in the May/June 2004 issue of Uplink, the bimonthly publication of the National Institute for Computer-Assisted Reporting, a joint program of Investigative Reporters &  Editors, Inc., and the University of Missouri School of Journalism.