I worked in a newsroom where a clut- ter-averse assistant managing editor periodically pushed a big trash bar- rel through the aisles expecting re- porters to toss documents. Packrats like me did not share his enthusiasm for a tidier newsroom. Then I learned about askSam, an archiving and free-form database program that allows journalists to squirrel away information electroni- cally - instead of letting it pile up on their desks.
The program is a natural friend to journalists, historians, archi- vists, investigators, and packrats of every stripe. Using askSam is better than living with paper clutter because nothing gets lost or buried. And the program does not force you to shoehorn data into fields with set lengths. In fact, you can choose whether or not to import data into fields. You can search, sort, and sift massive amounts of data (up to 16 terabytes), structured or unstructured, from an ar- ray of formats.
Its speed and flexibility explain why askSam is popular among intelligence and law enforcement agencies whose personnel often think and work like journalists. Using it The U.S. General Accounting Office uses it with other software to collect and organize survey information. Senate investigators pursuing the Iran-contra scandal employed askSam's lightning speed to good ad- vantage in the mid-1980's to ask in- formed questions of Oliver North in real time.
The program enabled them to organize, catalog and present the volumes of evidence they had gath- ered during their investigation and subsequent Senate hearings. A forensic document analyst at the U.S. Postal Inspection Service built a central repository in askSam of articles relating to death threats sent through the mail, forged signatures, counterfeit passports and related topics. While askSam is valuable to people who toss unstructured notes into files, then do simple or Boolean searches for com- binations of words or phrases, it also of- fers detailed reports based on field data queries.
For example, you can set askSam to automatically recognize e- mail fields such as, To, From and Sub- ject, or you can import e-mail without specifying any field. The database is searchable either way, but if you import e-mail with fields, you can ask for a re- port on all e-mail, say, from Ken Lay be- tween two dates when the subject con- tains a particular word or phrase. You can search dates, fields, proximity, or explore numeric values and relationships, or do a global search and replace.
You can search through multiple askSam databases to keep track of projects or to compare statements of public officials over time. The program is easy to use once you've figured out what you want from it, and it's smart enough to adapt for use with Microsoft Access, Excel or LexisNexis. Why would anyone want to import a spreadsheet into askSam? To more easily view and page through rows; to view it differently so as to spot errors; or to query it differently.
Viewing a long row of data in Excel is easier to read when laid out on one page. Each suc- ceeding row can be viewed, page by page, by pressing F9 for next (or ALT- F9 for previous.) Stories captured from LexisNexis can be searched in a variety of ways, such as for combinations of names, along- side Web pages, stories cut and pasted from today's news, annotated screen shots, and other tidbits gathered and thrown into the mix.
The search results are displayed in a split window that is easy to navigate. The results show the number of hits per document, context, and the first line of data. Click on any row to see the en- tire corresponding document. Getting started To begin using askSam, you open an empty database, name it and save it. You can immediately begin building a database in any of four ways: Drop documents into askSam by cut- ting and pasting them as plain text or, using the "paste special" option, as HTML or rich text.
(You add graphics separately.) Import all or some documents, one file type at a time, from a Windows folder. You can opt to import e-mail at- tachments. Link any file in its native format. Linked files retain their formats and can be opened in askSam and edited. Attach a file in any format. An at- tached file becomes a part of the askSam database. You can customize askSam data- bases using fonts, colors and other formatting.
HTML and rich text docu- ments will retain the formatting of the original files; text documents will re- flect your choices. You can also customize each database to control how dates are displayed and what search results are shown. The biggest complaint of longtime askSam users is that table columns in HTML and Word do not align prop- erly. Users have found a work- around: pasting table text into askSam to facilitate searching, and then attaching the original document to the database so it can be viewed with columnar data properly aligned.
modify - existing databases. The ability to share askSam data- bases with colleagues is a new fea- ture. Last year, the company, based in Perry, Fla., began offering a free viewer, which is similar in function to the Adobe Acrobat Reader. Col- leagues can use the free viewer to read and search - but not add to, or The standard askSam program retails for $149 and is powerful enough for importing e-mail, or keeping track of the elements of a nonfiction book or news project.
For power users who want more speed and flexibility, there is a professional version, which in- cludes full-text indexing, for $395 re- tail. Indexing speeds searches of big databases. askSam Professional also includes an ActiveX control that can be accessed from Visual Basic and other programming languages to cre- ate customized applications. The program's features include a tool to pack databases to keep them lean.
The program also allows document deletion and creation, and remembers which documents and searches you've marked for recall. For more about the program, visit www.asksam.com, where you can also download a 30-day evaluation version. Contact Bonnie Britt by e-mail at editor@editorsforum.org. CAR Tools focuses on software that's useful to journalists doing computer-assisted reporting. Recent issues of Uplink have taken a look at: ClusterSeer analytic mapping tool.
(January/February 2004) SAS System Viewer (November/December 2003) ParseRat text parser (September/October 2003) os X operating system (May/ June 2003) Rematch extension for ArcView 3.x (March/April 2003) If you have a favorite CAR tool that Uplink readers should know about, drop us a line at uplink@nicar.org.