Organizing your Research

Following on from my earlier post - 'Organisation is a skill", I thought we could look closer at the actual activity of being organised.

Now, I am not saying I have developed this skill, but rather, I have taken suggestions from other historical authors  and how they manage their research notes.

Extra wide dividers with tabs

Let us start with the basic ring binder method. For those who still like to sit and write  with pen and paper ( me), having your research material in binders is a convenient option. What could go wrong? You could buy those cheap tab dividers for starters, you know, the ones that disappear behind your plastic sleeves of information. Answer: Buy the extra wide ones. *see image.

You will also need lots of plastic sleeves for the multitude of information you print up, and more tab dividers and maybe, even more binders. Keep some large white stickers handy to place on your index page for that moment when your change your mind, move stuff around or just add new information to the ever growing file.

If you do most or all of your work on the computer it would make sense to be able to access all your files there too.

There are a number of programs/software available; Scrivener, Zotero, Endnote, Word, Excel, Evernote, Blue Orangizer, Noodle Tools, Research Gate, and Docear are some that have been noted by researchers as their go to tools. Most of which are all suitable for organising and saving research material.

I decided to give Scrivener a go and set up a free account with that purpose.  Scrivener is a word-processing program and outliner designed for authors. It provides a management system for documents, notes and other data. I found it reasonable basic but spent, what I consider, too much time setting it up. It has character and setting templates which were simplified.  I tried moving folders and chapters around but lost one, finding it later in another folder. Having said that, it was most likely just me trying to work things out as a newbie.

EverNote is an application which comes with a browser add-on, Zotero is an add-on for Firefox, and is helpful for managing and organizing bibliographies and reference materials.

Excel file with Census data

Excel files can be used in many ways. Whilst doing my family history research I used Excel to set up my massive accumulation of Census files from one particular line. It was a wonderful way of keeping track of all family members over the years , 1841 - 1911.  I also colour coded the different family groups. It is at this point I want to add that the English census is not only wonderful for family history, but also for researching a particular person in history who fits into that timeslot.

One cannot go past the hands on text books with their multitude of information, placed in a very accessible spot near your work space.

Whatever your method of filing, it is most important to keep track of the source from where your information comes from. There will always be someone who reads your book and says - 'That can't be right.'  And so you flip to your point of source and say, 'yes it is!'

My last point - save everything.