Organizing Your Slides

Slides are the most common medium for oral communications of scientific information. An active investigator may accumulate hundreds or even thousands of slides over a period of years. When you are preparing a talk or lecture, access to the information contained in your slides can become increasingly difficult unless you have a system of organization that is specific to your needs. Recently, I conducted a survey among 32 investigators who lecture frequently; 65% of them were not satisfied with their slide filing system. They estimated that the mean time required to retrieve a specific slide was 2 minutes, and to assemble a scientific presentation, 60 minutes. Faster and easier access to specific slides is vitally important if busy investigators are to maximize the efficient use of their time and prepare better quality presentations.