PDF inventory software

[Christopher Illies]

On Mon, Jun 08, 2009 at 05:17:29PM -0400, Daniel Underwood wrote:
> I'm looking for a way to manage my personal collection of research
> articles.  Ideally I'd like some way to keep records on authors,
> keywords, journals, and publication years of articles (PDF files)
> downloaded onto my local drive.
> 
>  In the course of reading literature for research, it often happens
> that I find myself wanted to return to something I have previously
> read, but I only recall a few "things" about the article, often the
> author and a keyword.  Is there some inventory/database software (for
> local use only) that can be easily used for this purpose?  (The
> closest things that comes to mind (conceptually) is "image collection"
> software.)
> 
> What are some of my options here?

If you want something with a GUI, you could have a look at JabRef
(needs Java):

http://jabref.sourceforge.net/index.php

It keeps a BibTeX database, lets you do searches on it and links to
the downloaded pdf files.

Christopher