With the release of Nota Bene 14, the suite of integrated programs described by Scientific Computing World as “a remarkably complete academic information-management environment, with a word processor as its face” dramatically extends the research possibilities open to you. There are difference makers everywhere, but the highlight is the expansion and radical simplification of its principal research component, Orbis.
FIND ANYTHING & LET IT SHAPE YOUR WORK
With Nota Bene 14, Orbis becomes the multi-tasking nerve center of the Nota Bene Workstation. Whether you are engaged in nuanced qualitative text/data analysis, want to locate passages lost in time, or delve into downloaded texts or those sent by collaborators, the new Orbis makes it all possible, effortlessly and instantaneously.
FULLY AUTOMATIC, WITH INSTANT ACCESS
This re-imagined Orbis is lightning fast, intervention-free, and always at hand. It automatically creates textbases of qualitative data behind the scenes, for search and analysis — your hundred most recent files, note-taking files linked to your Ibidem bibliographic database, all the files in the current folder(s), to name just a few — and instantly reveals their contents to you, in its lucid keyword-in-context display. Orbis delivers “aha moments” at every turn.
SHARING NEW DISCOVERIES
That’s why Orbis is called the “idea engine,” and why numerous users have written us over the years describing how — by seeing the way words are used, and arguments made, across disparate texts — they came to see things differently, with these discoveriess leading to articles, and then books, outlining these new perspectives to a broader public.
RESEARCH & CREATIVE AUTONOMY
This is data discovery and text analysis with a difference: No big data-gathering monopolies make suggestions based on what they think your interests are, trying to make you just another purveyor of accepted wisdom. Instead, the focus is on you and your own creativity — the insights you glean, and the patterns that emerge, as you peruse what Orbis brings together for you.
NEW CONVENIENCES EVERYWHERE
And although the new Orbis alone makes the new Nota Bene 14 something you simply won’t want to miss, you will find multiple new conveniences everywhere in this new release, including built-in web-citation-capture/library-search options, full bibliographic data interchange, the ability to install without administrative/IT privileges, and much more. You can read short summaries here, or a fuller description here (or click the links above).
SYNERGY THAT ENHANCES YOUR CREATIVITY
With Nota Bene 14, every part of the Workstation — writing, citing, taking notes, finding texts, analyzing them — now works together in the most simple and elegant of ways, with one task merging into the next in a newly uninhibited work-flow across the suite’s applications. Orbis, Nota Bene’s imaginative little idea-lookup engine, is always at your fingertips (dock it, or pop it up), giving you the freedom to do the work that matters to you.
I can say that I am deeeelighted with NB 14. It's an incredible improvement over previous releases and a real game-changer for me. I hope that users of earlier versions will take the plunge, upgrade, and coincidentally support NB's development. . . . I am honestly amazed at what you've done with NB.
Dr. Peter Knupfer
Founder and former director of H-NET (Humanities and Social Sciences Online), one of the first humanities listservs, now an independent, non-profit academic space for scholars, teachers, advanced students, and related professionals
