Tropy: A Tool I Wish I Had When Writing My Dissertation

The April edition of Perspectives on History has a write-up on the organization tool Tropy.

Man, could I have used this when I was writing my dissertation:

Take control of your research photos with Tropy, a tool that shortens the path from finding archival sources to writing about them. Spend more time using your research photos, and less time searching for them.

You can organize, annotate, tag, search, and export the pictures of your archival sources. Developed by the great folks at the Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media at George Mason University, it isn’t just for historians, but for anyone taking pictures for research purposes.

While Tropy has been available since October, most people are still only discovering it, and it should get more exposure because of the recent feature in Perspectives on History. I would have killed to be able to use this when finishing my book manuscript, trying to go through my hundreds of pages and pictures of manuscripts, letters, and printout of microfiched newspaper pieces. I’m tempted to finally a) digitize and b) organize these papers, even though the book is done and out and I’m probably never going to use the materials again.

Do you see yourself using Tropy? How might it be useful for you?

[Photo by Marcus Loke on Unsplash]