Multiple notes per source with page numbers?

[adam52]

A significant portion of my academic sources are books. So as you can imagine, I often collect multiple notes from each source. helm-bibtex specifies one notes file per source, so individual notes become headings, within the same file.

So if I want to insert a cite link for note 5, which references pages 57-59 from source 1, how should I setup helm-bibtex/org-ref (or my bibtex db) to automatically add the right page numbers, when I have multiple notes per source?

I thought about breaking notes into multiple @inBook entries. But unless I am citing a chapter heading, it means inserting an artificial title, which will get added to the citation. I also thought about using multiple @book entries but with different page numbers. But this seems like it would make a total mess of my helm-bibtex search view...

Any ideas?

Thanks,

[tmalsburg]

I'm using org-pdftools for this purpose. One workflow: 1. Mark some passage in the PDF (book, article, whatever). 2. Store org link to that passage. 3. Insert org link in my notes.

[adam52]

Thanks Titus. So suppose you have a the following notes file:

#+TITLE: Bradley, J. (1973): Essential Mathematics For Economists
#+STARTUP: latexpreview inlineimages
-----

* Dynamic models: the consumption function
Taken from p. 164

* Changes in Capital Stock
Taken from p.  188

* The Accelerator-Multiplier Model
Taken from p. 200

You now start working on a research paper and you want to cite your notes on the Accelerator-Multiplier Model, from page 200. How do you configure helm-bibtex so that when you insert the reference, your cite link automatically pulls the page reference, like this:

[[cite:bradley1973es][p. 200]]

instead of this:

cite:bradley1973es

By-the-way, a good part of my references were authored before the days of Pdfs. So if you have any guidance on how we should be document page numbers in our notes (whether as part of a properties drawer, etc.) to make this work, that would be fantastic!

Thanks,

[tmalsburg]

I'm not sure I understand. You say that you'd like to cite your notes but notes are not publications, so how do you cite them? But your example suggests that you'd like to cite a specific page of a publication, but how does this involve notes? Also, the cite syntax that you're using suggests that you're using org-ref. Are you sure that you're question is about helm-bibtex not org-ref? These are different projects. The scope of helm-bibtex is to provide a way to search entries in your bibliography. org-ref offers bibliography tools for authoring org documents. It uses helm-bibtex in some places.

[adam52]

Hi Titus - thank you for your response.

I am not looking to cite my notes. I am looking to cite the page or page range from the source where the notes were taken.

My question was whether there is a recommended way to document page numbers (either in our .bib file or in our notes) so that adding cite links of the form [[cite:refkey][p. 32]] can be automated, similar to how helm-bibtex might insert a cite link for an entire source?

[tmalsburg]

I am not looking to cite my notes. I am looking to cite the page or page range from the source where the notes were taken.

Sorry, that wasn't clear. Have you tried org-pdftools? I use it exactly for this purpose. I configured it such that it includes the page number by default in the link. But the links are not org-ref links as in your example. Here's my config:

(require 'org-pdftools)

(setq org-pdftools-root-dir "~/Documents/Uni/Bibliographie/")
(setq org-pdftools-link-prefix "pdftools")

(org-link-set-parameters "pdftools"
                         :follow #'org-pdftools-open
                         :complete #'org-pdftools-complete-link
                         :store #'org-pdftools-store-link
                         :export #'org-pdftools-export)

(defun tmalsburg-org-pdftools-get-desc-function (file page text)
  (format "“%s” (page %s)" text page))

(setq org-pdftools-get-desc-function #'tmalsburg-org-pdftools-get-desc-function)

(add-hook 'org-store-link-functions 'org-pdftools-store-link)

[adam52]

Ah fantastic. Thanks Titus! Are you able to use this same workflow for sources that do not have a pdf (eg. book)?

[tmalsburg]

Are you able to use this same workflow for sources that do not have a pdf (eg. book)?

I don't know. All my documents are in PDF format. But the name org-pdftools suggests that it may be limited to PDFs.