Organizing acquired primary sources

[Jahiliyya]

I'm doing field work right now, and am acquiring increasingly large amounts of research material, ranging from books and pamphlets to interview recordings and transcriptions, as well as piles of business cards from contacts.

Does anyone have any insight into methods of organization? Physical versus digital, or both? It's also a bit tough to have a permanent filing system right now, since everything needs to get back to the U.S. with me in several months.

[msafiri]

Jahiliyya, I completely understand. I'm in the same position. Interview recordings and transcriptions are saved on my hard drive and backed up on a portable external HD and on a cloud storage service (SugarSync). I haven't accumulated books so I haven't had to deal with that. For pamphlets, I'm scanning and saving them digitally and putting them in a plastic folder so I can bring them back to the US. Business cards are in a state of disarray at the moment but I need to start organizing them ASAP. Thanks for the reminder on that one.

Good luck!