I have a photographic memory and have no need to look up anything more tha........ ...half past six. Err, what was that? Oh yes - I have usually downloaded the reference books I've needed at a given time and kept in a neat folder on my PC (regularly backed up), with sub folders per topic. If it is something I am likely to refer to on a regular basis, I also print a hard copy and mark commonly referred to pages with sticky tabs (and also often scribble notes in the margins). I'm hopeless at remembering everything that I probably should, and have learned to simply remember the most significant areas according to what I cover within my role. As long as I know where to look, that is good enough for me. I've also got soft copies on my laptop at home (also regularly backed up) just in case...

I had huge amounts of hard copy documents up until last year when I got rid of the lot as I work form home as was sick of the amount of space they take up. I now have electronic copies of everything. All organised into sub folders. Paperless is the way to go but treat the electronic copies in the same way you would hard copies....and I don't mean prop up the wobbly desk either!!!!

Interesting topic, I haven't considered this yet, but I will now. I have textbooks from different courses which I use as reference and my bulging Bookmarks file on my home computer (Safety Related). My concern is losing stuff I've filed! My next concern is how to keep the bookmarks and transfer that information to some other format for use at work? Do you know of a good way?

I have (my PC tells me) 1,737,487,411 bytes of documents in 1,268 Files across 81 Folders in my reference library. That's not just H&S references (only 226,074,914 bytes, 115 Files, 14 Folders of them). They are all in a tree of folders by topic, and filenames have publisher, document number and a hint of subject, eg 'HSE_L73_guide_to_RIDDOR.pdf'. There's some duplication. For example, teh CDM regs are under Health_Safety/CDM/ and also under legal_SIs_etc/ My master set is on the work PC, I duplicate it onto a USB stick and my tablet once a week or so. I have the CDM ACOP on paper, but that's about all that's in hardcopy.

I have been going through mine last night. I have hundreds of Regs and books on my laptop filed neatly under twenty-odd different folders - and currently in the process of backing them up on to a flash drive which is taking ages. I also have about 14 lever arch folders from my studies on my office shelf and, to be honest, I much rather prefer flicking through these than reading them off my computer screen.

If I am honest I am a bit of a techno phobe - however I do store all my reference docs on the PC - but rather than read from the screen, I will highlight and print ther bits I need when I need them. That said I also keep a hard copy of the six pack in one folder beside the desk at all times. Like others this is tabbed and annotated in the margins with other references. Hey - it works for me.

I was rapidly traveling down the digital route................ Then just before Christmas the local substation pretty much blew up and we had no power for 2 days thus no server either etc etc I've rethinking my reliance on electrons since

What about Mr Common Sense and Mr Red tape I guess all of these people will be depicted working in offices as the "government" think these are the only workplaces that exist in this country

kKim, this might be of interest. Sharing favorites Favorites, also known as bookmarks, are a convenient way to organize and link to webpages that you visit frequently. If you use Internet Explorer on several computers, you can easily save your favorites on one computer and import that list onto another computer. If you use both Internet Explorer and another web browsing program, you can keep your favorites synchronized by importing them between programs. To import or export favorites Open Internet Explorer. Click the Add to Favorites button , and then click Import and Export. Follow the instructions in the Import/Export Wizard. By default, the Import/Export Wizard creates a standard HTML file named bookmark.htm and saves it in the My Documents folder. When you use the wizard to import your favorites, it will look for that file. Notes To Share or move favorites from one computer to another, export or copy the Bookmark.htm file to a disk or flash drive. You can then import your favorites from the disk or flash drive to the new computer. To print your list of favorites, open Bookmark.htm in Internet Explorer and then click the Print button .

Further to the above on bookmarks, I was considering a word or excel document with hyperlinks to both online resources and my own downloaded PDF files. In theory this document list may become long, but could be word searched to quickly find the topic you want and thus all the related linked you have accumulated. This all could be put on a data drive / pen drive and taken to any computer. The list could even store your own notes. Yep I am that sad.