“I don’t know if you recall a conversation that you and I had at Laird Park at least 10 years ago,” my friend, Margie, emailed me recently. She went on to write, “I told you that I used your filing system faithfully. I asked if you had figured out a way to do it on the computer, which would seem to be more efficient, portable, etc. You told me you had not, but invited me to let you know if I found a way to do that. WELL, yesterday I found it!”
Yes, I clearly recalled the conversation at our neighborhood park and was delighted that Margie, who has since relocated to another area of the city, remembered our agreement and contacted me. I could hardly wait to read about what she had discovered. She explained that she had attended a bi-stake Relief Society meeting the day before about using technology to come unto Christ, and following the general session she selected a class taught by Brother Mark Boyd, a member of their stake who is one of the Church’s designers of lds.org. He addressed an option called “My Study Notebook” which is an electronic filing system.
Margie pointed out, “You can access it either through the Menu or the Tools on the home page of lds.org. This is how it works:
- You sign in, which then makes everything you do there personal and the record is kept under your name.
- You can write your personal journal if you like and store it there.
- You have a Tabs option that becomes an index to whatever you have written. So if you’re preparing a talk and want to refer to a journal entry you made where you reflected on, say faith, you could just click on your “faith” tab, and it would pull up all your references to that subject.
- You could create any number of files in this My Study Notebook;’ each is referred to as a notebook.’ Therefore, if I wanted to start taking my handouts from Relief Society and either scan or type them in OR, if they’re already on lds.org, anyway, just copy and paste them, I could build a file and have it automatically indexed using the Tab function. Any time I find a really great paragraph in an Ensign article, I could go to the online version, copy and paste that into my notebook at My Study Notebook, and pull it up easily without having to look through index cards and find it in a filing cabinet.
“The Church has given us the means of making a gospel topic file so much more readily accessible, and the input would take much less time than using word processing and all its functions. “
My eyes fairly raced as they took in this exciting information and my mind flooded with all the possible advantages and uses of such a fast, efficient, portable system. The portability is especially appealing to me. Instead of lugging weighty binders full of resource material on missions as Hank and I have done, we can carry all of it and much, much more on a two pound iPad.
A couple of weeks later, the February 2, 2012 issue of “Mormon Times” published weekly in the Deseret News, featured a full page spread about “Online Helps-LDS Church Resources Increasing With Mobile Apps, New Websites.” It had this to say about “My Study Notebook:”
When you’re preparing a talk or lesson, or just studying the gospel, My Study Notebook can help you gather and organize your sources in a convenient way. To see My Study Notebook in action, sign in to LDS.org and start reading content. Look for a black toolbar in the footer.
You can click buttons on this toolbar to bookmark articles or write journal entries. You can also highlight passages with your cursor. When you highlight a passage, a pop-up window appears that allows you to add notes and tags.
All your bookmarks, highlights and notes are saved in a personal, private space on LDS.org that you can access by going to Tools >My Study Notebook, or by clicking Open Notebook in the footer toolbar.
Recently, My Study Notebook was integrated into the Gospel Library app for Apple. You can now access My Study Notebook directly within the Gospel Library interface, rather than just from LDS.org. Highlights and notes you add to verses on the mobile device sync with the content in My Study Notebook on LDS.org. and vice versa. (by Caresa Alexander, Deseret News)
In a subsequent email, Margie shared with me a thought from the general session with speaker Brother Don Atkinson, twice a mission president, now a member of the Salt Lake Mission Presidency, and also the CEO of Clearplay. He pointed out that “technology is neutral. It can be used to increase light or darkness in our lives. Light produces love, peace, and joy; darkness produces fear, hatred, and contention. What technology can do is to take us either direction much more quickly than in the past. We must constantly improve our family’s sensitivity to the promptings of the Holy Ghost, to help us recognize the light from the darkness.”
What a blessing My Study Notebook can be in facilitating the storing and sharing of edifying, inspirational material. I’m thankful my friend, Margie, followed through on that promise at the park ten years ago. Yes, there is a way to use our computers for filing resource material.
* * * * * * * * * * * * *
(Note: Other on-line organizational tools are available such as the very popular Pinterest.com. It provides a good system for filing recipes, decoration ideas and much more.)
* * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Daryl Hoole, mother of eight, has been a best-selling author and popular lecturer on home management and family living. Now retired, she enjoys free lance writing. She is answering questions from readers who contact her at [email protected]“>[email protected]. Her “At Home” column appears on the second Monday of each month on Meridian. This information is also available on her personal website at www.theartofhomemaking.com
