Inspired by Nigel (who is often on the bleeding edge of technology) I ordered a Fujitsu ScanSnap – see below – which arrived a day ago. It’s about the size of a loaf of bread, has one control button (“Scan”), and scans 20 double-sided pages per minute to PDF. I hope to use it to organize the piles of preprints, handwritten notes and manuscripts that I have accumulated in nearly thirty years as a mathematician.

That then begs the question – what software should I use to keep track of the resulting huge pile of PDFs? Right how I am working with Zotero which will organize pdfs, archive them on a WebDAV server, and also integrate with Penn State’s library and other sources of bibliographic info. And it will seamlessly import the bibtex bibliography that I have maintained since I started using TeX. But there may well be other useful software packages out there that will do the same or better – any suggestions?