The Power of Facets
DiviFile is an information management tool that offers you a whole new way to conceptualize your research topics and organize your information resources. DiviFile is the only general reference filing system that let's you file a single item into multiple categories. This allows you to create your own organizational system, using a technique known as Faceted Classification, which is more natural and intuitive than using the single-facted hierarchical system found in Windows Explorer or in your browser's built-in bookmark manager.
A facet is a top-level category, the descendants of which describe and divide a particular aspect of the information you are organizing. DiviFile gives you the power to organize your files, bookmarks, and notes into multiple facets. This can best be explained via an example.
Over the course of time, you've likely gathered a number of bookmarks in regards to places you've lived, studied, worked, travelled. So if you're from a small town in Pennsylvania called Lewisburg, studied in Philadelphia, and travelled last year to San Diego, you'd have categories like these:
The longer you stay in a place, the more related bookmarks you'll collect. Pretty soon you'll have numerous sub-categories:
- United States
- California
- San Diego
- Coffee Shops
- Hiking
- Lodging
- Nightlife
- Pennsylvania
- Lewisburg
- Coffee Shops
- Hiking
- Libraries
- Philadelphia
- Libraries
- Lodging
- Local Transit
- Nightlife
- Parking
You'll notice that a lot of the same sub-categories are repeated for each place. This indicates an opportunity to employ Faceted Classification by extracting these sub-categories into an independent taxonomy, a.k.a. facet. In Windows Explorer and your browser's built-in bookmark manager, however, you're pretty much stuck recreating those same sub-categories over and over again. But DiviFile does let you separate your research topics into facets. In this example you could create a "Regional" facet and a "Local Info" one.
When a topic contains items that are shared with other topics, a list of related topics are automatically expanded below it. Clicking on one of these, which are differentiated with italics text, will display those items which belong to both the related topic and the parent under which you clicked. Related topics are expanded within all facets, giving you more than one way to view your data. That is, if you want to view your lodging choices in San Diego, you can navigate Regional > San Diego > Lodging or you can navigate Local Info > Lodging > San Diego – in either case, you will be viewing the exact same data.