7 Books, 2 CDs, over 50 Articles and Still Going

by Author and askSam User Bob Trubshaw

askSam and SurfSaver are my daily tools for writing.  So far they have helped me greatly with seven books, two CD-ROMs and upwards of 50 substantial articles. If you wanted to be pedantic you could (almost) add another book to the tally where askSam and SurfSaver have been a big help - nearly finished a 70,000+ word revised edition of 'How to Write and Publish Local History' (the original edition was only 40,000 words).

My main askSam database lists all bibliographical sources (including detailed notes - often made by using Dragon Dictate 'within' askSam - and, occasionally, importing scanned and OCR'd sections of text).  By using the basic 'search' function or the more sophisticated proximity search in askSam, I can pick up on relevant keywords.  I usually simply copy and paste relevant text into the draft of the book, although sometimes it is helpful to the export all the relevant askSam 'hits' into a Microsoft Word document.

Without SurfSaver I have no idea how I would keep in control of Web-based research.  It allows (most!) Web pages to be snaffled for offline storage and, above all, allows vast amounts of data to be searched quickly.

Books:

Ÿ     Little-known Leicestershire and Rutland (1995)

Ÿ     How to Write and Publish Local History (1999)

Ÿ     Explore Folklore (2002)

Ÿ     Explore Mythology (2003)

Ÿ     Rutland Village by Village (2003)

Ÿ     Good Gargoyle Guide (2004)

Ÿ     Leicestershire Legends retold by Black Annis (2004)

CD-ROMs:

Ÿ     Interactive Little-known Leicestershire and Rutland (2002)

Ÿ     Gargoyles and Grotesque Carvings of Leicestershire and Rutland (2002)

Further info on all these at http://www.hoap.co.uk