Web Research by a Freelance Writer

Anna Lane is an actor and free lance writer based in Los Angeles, California. She recently received an assignment to write an article on the Empire State building. Although there are literally millions of published pages on this famous landmark, Anna’s editor wanted a young person’s perspective likely to attract hip young international tourists. Having been thus briefed, Anna formulated the Google search terms she needed and very quickly had a list of internet documents she would use as the research material for her article. Of course, she had been through this process many and used different note taking apps such a Evernote, Microsoft One Note etc. Each time, as she gathered her research notes to prepare for writing the first draft, she had felt like this:

You can read it here.

Helpless

Having come across Numici, she decided to test it out in the article writing process. She first watched a ten minute “getting started” video on the Numici web site.Anna created a Numici task space (Numici terminology for a project  work space) and added the URLs from her Google searches.

Create Taskspace

Project Taskspace
After organizing her source research material in a Numici task space, she began the work of reading and taking notes. Numici makes this core activity intuitive and unobstructive. A piece of text – or some text and an image(s) or just an image can be captured by simply highlighting it. This serves as the root for all the notes related to this information. Numici maintains a link to the exact location in the source document and treats the highlight and associated comments as a single unit.

Taking notes while reading

Taking notes while reading
Once she finishes reading, highlighting and writing notes on the entire set of research material it is time to work the “magic” of the Numici digest i.e., create a synthesis of her research notes across multiple documents at touch of a button. She also configures the digest’s look and feel as well as the structure of the content using the settings button. This is an optional step, as Numici has a default digest format and structure.

Digest of all notes

Digest of all the notes in the Project

Article on Substack

Anna Lane’s Home Page on Substack

Anna generates a pdf copy of the digest which she uses as a single all-in-all reference document and starts the writing process. The pdf digest has links to the exact locations in the research material should she need to go back for context to the original document.Here is her article on Substack.

Anna’s experience with Numici in her own words:

“Numici enabled me to collect many webpages, dates, and important quotations and synthesize them into a single online workspace. With just a few clicks, I said goodbye to the endless tabs and documents a the process of doing research for an article is known for, and was able to scan all of my sources and information with ease — cutting down my research time, and making the writing process a lot smoother. I was highly impressed with Numici (including my grief over having been unable to use it throughout the hundred-essay marathon of my college Lit class), and had a terrific time using it to complete this article.”

Engineering Research and Development

Engineering Research and Development