Organizing Notes and Research

[unforth]

I went hunting through some of the old threads to see if there was one on this, and I didn't see one in the last 6 months, so sorry if this is repetitious but...

I was wondering what strategies people used to organize and keep track of their research notes, books, articles and all that jazz. I'm particularly interested in websites and programs. I know a few people have mentioned things they use - I saw someone mention Endnote, and someone else Evernote. Do people use technological methods? Or flash cards? Or notebooks? What works for people?

Here's what I've tried in the past:

1. Notebooks. When I was an undergrad I would keep notes in a notebook, sorted by which book the notes were from. This was always problematic; it would get clunky quickly, took a lot of time to handwrite, and once I'd read 10 or 15 books it would get increasingly hard to find what was where. Furthermore, it was organizationally static - I had no way of reorganizing the notes thematically or chronologically or anything, I was bound by my book organization. I don't want to continue to use this method in to the future.

2. OneNote. I've used OneNote, a microsoft program that comes with Word and Excel and PP and such. It has some flexibility, but again, I've found it static. Also, without extensive planning ahead of time, I've found it hard to keep things straight and figure out effective ways to organize things. And since there's no way to tag or otherwise mark things, it's hard to pull out specifics. On the other hand, it's very easy to move data around, which is handy.

3. Scrivener (<a href="http://www.literatureandlatte.com/scrivener.php">here</a>). A friend of mine clued me in to this, she uses it for fiction writing. Trying it is going to be my next step, I think it's going to have a LOT of flexibility. I'll speak up when I've gotten a better sense of how effective it'll be.

So, what do other folks use? How do you feel about its effectiveness?

[Eigen]

I use a lot of different things. I'm in a bench science, so lots of data to organize in addition to writings and readings.

I use Endnote for all my literature, and either annotate the files directly or attach a word file with summaries and thoughts to the paper and citation in Endnote.

I use Scrivener to write, especially longer pieces.

I use Onenote to keep an organized collection of data that I need to reference regularly an in a highly presentable fashion.

I also keep a large moleskin notebook for fleshing out future directions for papers and research ideas.

I'm also a fan of very, very organized Dropbox folders for all of my work.

Edited April 24, 2012 by Eigen

[theregalrenegade]

I use a lot of different things. I'm in a bench science, so lots of data to organize in addition to writings and readings.

I use Endnote for all my literature, and either annotate the files directly or attach a word file with summaries and thoughts to the paper and citation in Endnote.

I use Scrivener to write, especially longer pieces.

I use Onenote to keep an organized collection of data that I need to reference regularly an in a highly presentable fashion.

I also keep a large moleskin notebook for fleshing out future directions for papers and research ideas.

I'm also a fan of very, very organized Dropbox folders for all of my work.

Wow, almost me to a T! Just add Zotero for citations and a few more notebooks...

[hbeels]

Looking forward to reading these responses--my notes always feel so disorganized! I write in books a lot, which is admittedly a poor idea--hard to find things I'm looking for.

I sometimes even resort to the yellow legal pad. Or looseleaf paper.

I need a notetaking intervention.

[Gene Parmesan]

I posted this in "Reading tips for graduate students in history programs" about 20 min before this thread was started but maybe its more appropriate here:

Since we've been discussing how to read books effectively in a short time, I'm curious to learn how many of you take external notes on monographs. This is somewhat related to the thread, "To Buy or Borrow?" In a more recent post a few people mentioned checking out books from the library and taking extensive notes externally outside of the margins. I've been experimenting with a few note-taking strategies, and they include the following:

-Using thin post-it notes to mark pages in a book. Typically, I'll use two colors like blue and green. Blue for argument/method/theory, and green for content/evidence/case studies that are relevant to a write up or relate to something else I've read. This can get tedious or confusing sometimes, so I'll just use one color and mark all relevant pages.

-Writing a list of the author's critical vocabulary in the first blank page of the book if I own the book. So for example, I just read Don Mitchell's Lie of the Land and marked all relevant definitions of landscape and cultural geography in the blank pages. This works for identifying periodization, too.

-External notes on blank paper that identify thesis and method. I also take notes of the author's outline of chapters that they generally put in the intro. That way when I skim chapters I can refer to my paper note to quickly remember what the point of the chapter was in their words. Later I try to go back and type all my notes.

On a good day, I'll be able to practice all three of these strategies, but sometimes it ends up being an odd mixture of the them. So if anyone would like to share how they take notes or if they have a particular strategy that works for them, that'd be great, as I'm trying myself to learn an effective combo of strategies. Also, I noticed some people are starting to use kindles/e-readers more, at least for articles and PDF. Maybe they can share how they take in-text digital notes.