The second of the seminars was about managing resources. Speaking personally, and as an interdisciplinary researcher with a lot of resources on the go at the same time, my bibliography and research notes are in a real mess. I’m pretty sure that I’m doing better on my computer than I would be with a card system, but only barely!
This disorganisation is leading to a certain amount of anxiety, as I always feel that my research is out of control, and keep thinking that I’m missing out lots of things I meant to mention. Time to sort it all out before it’s too late!
Part of my problem up until now has been a deep seated hate of EndNote. It works ok, inserts citations into Word documents etc., but it is so painful to edit references and make notes. I also couldn’t find a satisfactory way to organise my references into themes and chapters (and I tried using keywords and groups).
I have decided to switch to Zotero (on the advice of a friend, and after a quick trial run over the last couple of days). I still have the EndNote files as a backup, but from now on I’m organising and note-taking in my new browser based interface (much more satisfying and less clunky).
Anyway, on to what I took away from the seminar…
Never just read a resource (unless you decide after a quick look that it’s of no importance to your research). Make your read through worth while, even if you don’t have time to make exhaustive notes, always record a summary and a critique, so that you’ve got something to jog your memory when you see the reference again.
The summary, um, should be a summary.
The critique should: identify problems you see with the text and identify aspects that are particularly pertinent for your own research.
I’m sure I knew that I should have been doing this all along, but I haven’t. Maybe everyone else has been much better and more organised than me. However, all is not lost, and next week I’m going to work on categorising my resources in Zotero, deleting the things I now know are of no use and writing quick summaries and critiques for resources where I haven’t already done this. (Yes, that probably is a huge number, even though I have lots of notes for many of them, but I’ll work from the most relevant to the least relevant).
