How do you organize...?

[nevermind]

So for this term, I've made notes of what I read including:

Title

Author

Main point/Intervention

Context/Reacting against/Opposing Views

Overall Summary

Footnote Citation / Bib. Citation

---

This is basically to catalog all my work/readings for a quick reference during qualifying exams. Does anybody use software to keep this stuff organized? I've tried Mendeley but I'm not a huge fan so far. Thoughts?

[Sigaba]

Have you had the opportunity to sit through sessions of seminars in which professors run through lists of books and give summaries of books in one sentence or less?

 

[nevermind]

12 minutes ago, Sigaba said:

Have you had the opportunity to sit through sessions of seminars in which professors run through lists of books and give summaries of books in one sentence or less?

 

 

 

I'm not sure what you're getting at. I just wanted tips on organizing my notecards electronically. I know how to summarize effectively. 

Edited December 14, 2016 by nevermind

[Sigaba]

1 hour ago, nevermind said:

I'm not sure what you're getting at. 

@nevermind I am not trying to box you in. I tend to ask direct questions (that box people in).

While individual learning styles are different, if you've experienced what I described in my previous post, you've been given a format for how to organize your readings in preparation for qualifying exams and beyond.

By seeking to catalog your readings, you may be adding elements of complexity that are comforting while you prepare for qualifying exams but end up being confining when you're actually taking qualifying exams. Keep in mind that you are being trained as a professional academic historian so that you can create new knowledge. Qualifying exams may just ask you to show how well you know the existing knowledge, but they can also prompt you to take a stab at creating new knowledge.

IMO, preparing for qualifying exams is like building and fine tuning a kaleidoscope. You want to organize your knowledge in such a way that you can easily identify it as the kaleidoscope is being turned but not to the point where the identifying features prevent you from seeing new shapes, patterns, and colors under extreme intellectual and psychological pressure. 

By period/area/topic (or combination thereof).

1. Author, short title, year, one sentence summary that captures central argument and sources. How it advances relevant historiographical debate

Edited December 14, 2016 by Sigaba
Getting funky formatting.

[nevermind]

This is what I'm trying to create and hence my call for a system of "cataloging" (or "organization") using software. 

My notes for this project basically fit on a 3x5 index card. (FWIW, My longer notes from classes are in Word files and span pages and really do nothing except help me write my finals). I've summarized all of my readings this term into very short sentences that encapsulate who wrote it, why they wrote it, what's new in their writings. It's not exactly rocket science, but I was wondering if there was a better place to organize this than keeping an excel file (I don't like working in excel). I like keeping the bib. references so I can copy and paste without having to re-do the work every time I write/reference them. 

[Sigaba]

11 minutes ago, nevermind said:

This is what I'm trying to create and hence my call for a system of "cataloging" (or "organization") using software. 

My notes for this project basically fit on a 3x5 index card. (FWIW, My longer notes from classes are in Word files and span pages and really do nothing except help me write my finals). I've summarized all of my readings this term into very short sentences that encapsulate who wrote it, why they wrote it, what's new in their writings. It's not exactly rocket science, but I was wondering if there was a better place to organize this than keeping an excel file (I don't like working in excel). I like keeping the bib. references so I can copy and paste without having to re-do the work every time I write/reference them. 

I am thinking that I (mis)read your question to mean "How do you organize your notes as part of the process of preparing for qualifying exams?"

It seems that you're asking about the best software to build a reference tool that you'll use while taking your qualifying exams. If such is the case, depending upon how much time you have, I recommend staying with Excel. While Excel isn't the best software for building a database, it's superior to Word.

[Neist]

This probably seems fairly antiquated, and I don't know if it'll be effective because this is my first semester, but I've been compiling subject-specific annotated bibliographies. 

I really like lists. I really like them.  

[rising_star]

Have you considered using MS Access? It's a database program where you could basically make lots of individual cards which would then be searchable. You could also do something similar in OneNote. Neither of those handles bibliography (maybe just keep the bibliography info in Mendeley, which isn't hard to do if you download it directly from WorldCat, your library catalog, or the journal's site) and use either OneNote or Access for your more detailed information? Those are the first ideas which came to mind when I read your question (and before I read everything @Sigaba wrote, which mostly confused me about what the original question and post were about). If it's more of what @Sigaba was getting at that you're interested in, then that's a quite different conversation but one which exists in both discipline-specific forums and over in the "Coursework, Advising, and Exams" subforum of "Officially Grads". I recommend searching through those if you're looking for specific tips on how to prepare for qualifying exams.

Also, FWIW, I like the idea of keeping track of what someone is responding to or working within the context of because it gives you another way to search for and sort all of your notes at exam time. It might also make it easier to see where a particular person's line of research hasn't been followed up on, which leads to questions about why, which could show an entire dead end in the field or an area ripe for future research depending on what it is. Which is to say that if you like your system and it seems like it can work from convos with your professors and more senior grad students, stick with it. What is useful and productive for you is not going to be the same as it is for other people. Knowing yourself and how you work best is a key part of being able to successfully complete the PhD.

[AP]

For my notes I use OneNote because it syncs constantly. 

To the notes that you take, I also added a summary of the book, the table of contents, the story(ies), and the historical context. Closer to my exams I would write notes at the top of the page saying something like "good for nationalism [i.e. good for a question on nationalism]" or "eg of land tenure struggle" and so on. 

[TMP]

I've been using EverNote.  I have "notebooks" for each exam field (and now for different parts of my dissertation bibliography.)  While there are plenty of books that cross-list, I put them under main fields and use the search function if I need to to find that book/article.  

I use the following headings:

Research Question (what's the author's big question?)

Primary Argument (what @Sigaba is getting at with one sentence)

Secondary Arguments (what other arguments is the author making?)

Historiographical Interventions (this is where I take notes on the historiographical questions/literature that the author engages with within the introduction)

Sources/Methods

Table of Contents (I have chapters and subchapters (and sometimes sub-subchapters)-- this is useful for getting a visual image of how the author's organizing the entire argument.

If I have time, then I'll include the argument of each chapter under the chapter heading and incorporate any interesting evidence/information.  But in all and all, I get the big idea from doing this exercise.

[AP]

On 12/14/2016 at 10:32 PM, rising_star said:

Have you considered using MS Access? It's a database program where you could basically make lots of individual cards which would then be searchable. You could also do something similar in OneNote. Neither of those handles bibliography (maybe just keep the bibliography info in Mendeley, which isn't hard to do if you download it directly from WorldCat, your library catalog, or the journal's site) and use either OneNote or Access for your more detailed information? Those are the first ideas which came to mind when I read your question (and before I read everything @Sigaba wrote, which mostly confused me about what the original question and post were about). If it's more of what @Sigaba was getting at that you're interested in, then that's a quite different conversation but one which exists in both discipline-specific forums and over in the "Coursework, Advising, and Exams" subforum of "Officially Grads". I recommend searching through those if you're looking for specific tips on how to prepare for qualifying exams.

Also, FWIW, I like the idea of keeping track of what someone is responding to or working within the context of because it gives you another way to search for and sort all of your notes at exam time. It might also make it easier to see where a particular person's line of research hasn't been followed up on, which leads to questions about why, which could show an entire dead end in the field or an area ripe for future research depending on what it is. Which is to say that if you like your system and it seems like it can work from convos with your professors and more senior grad students, stick with it. What is useful and productive for you is not going to be the same as it is for other people. Knowing yourself and how you work best is a key part of being able to successfully complete the PhD.

As far a databases are concerned, consider also Airtable. I personally found it way easier than Access. It's online. 

[nuntiavetustatis]

On 12/16/2016 at 9:32 AM, AP said:

As far a databases are concerned, consider also Airtable. I personally found it way easier than Access. It's online. 

I am also a fan of Airtable. you probably don't need all the features, but it's cool because you can insert pictures into the cells and link to other sheets in the project that you are working on. 

I'm also experimenting with the note taking capabilities of Zotero. I've used it as a reference manager for several years but I've never tried the note taking or tagging features until recently. 

[thebeachbum]

I also used Evernote to organize my readings during coursework/qualifying exams. I found the tagging system especially useful to connect related books across a field or subfield. Cameron Blevins has some really helpful posts on the qualifying exam process that outlines his workflow and note-taking format. My notes were similar to his with a slightly shorter “argument synopsis” section and more of an emphasis on historical intervention/methodology.

It might be helpful to talk to other graduate students in your program and find out how they prepared for quals and organized their notes. It sounds like you’re in the early stages of your program, but if you have an idea of who will be supervising your exam fields you might want to seek them out too. While I had one field examiner who required me to format my notes in a super specific way, my other two never asked to see my notes. This might save you a lot of time and energy down the road.

I’d also recommend against using index cards this early in the game because you don’t want to limit yourself too much in terms of the information you’re recording. It helps to have more to draw from as you’re attempting to synthesize the field. Index cards are super useful as you get closer to the actual exam date especially if your program requires an oral exam.

 

Links to Blevin's resources:

http://www.cameronblevins.org/posts/surviving-quals-part-i-laying-the-groundwork/

http://www.cameronblevins.org/posts/surviving-quals-part-ii-the-grind/

http://www.cameronblevins.org/posts/u-s-history-book-summaries/

 

[ManifestMidwest]

I really love Evernote, and I find it to be one of the most important tools I use, as it lets me sync my work across computers (I do this with Dropbox as well).  With Evernote, I take notes on two or three book reviews and the table of contents before I read the text, and then some general notes as I read.  At the end, I write a single-page, single-spaced critical essay of each book that I read.  In the essay, I survey the author's arguments, sources used, how it fits into the scholarship, and any criticisms that I have.

[MMii]

 

On 14/12/2016 at 9:49 PM, nevermind said:

So for this term, I've made notes of what I read including:

Title

Author

Main point/Intervention

Context/Reacting against/Opposing Views

Overall Summary

Footnote Citation / Bib. Citation

---

This is basically to catalog all my work/readings for a quick reference during qualifying exams. Does anybody use software to keep this stuff organized? I've tried Mendeley but I'm not a huge fan so far. Thoughts?

I use zotero for bibliography, evernote for longer note-taking and scrivener for writing and research notes related to specific chapters. Have you tried scrivener? It offers a digital index card system as one of its features which sounds like it would suit what you're trying to do and which one can attach to longer thoughts/essays about the book. (As if you're attaching an index card with skeletal data to a hard copy of a paper). One of the great features is being able to view these cards in corkboard view which is basically an overview where you can move around and sort the cards into themes etc. It is also extremely useful for thesis-writing (actually its main function is for writing typescripts). 

Edited January 21, 2017 by SarahMoon
Grammar