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Instructional Design & Development

Organizing as you read

Getting Organized

As you do research, keep track of your sources, and organize them into groups.  You might group them based on

  • source information you will need to write your references
  • claims and/or main findings
  • methods (if important)
  • assumptions authors have made (which you might agree with or find infuriating)
  • page numbers and content of phrases or statistics you might want to quote/cite

Note: All of these details could inform future searching and save you from having to comb through an article trying to find a lost piece of information! 

Organizing as you search

Organizing Your Search

EndNote X9 - the most recent version that has been licensed by UAB.  You can get started by checking out this research guide on EndNote.

<--------"Research" accounts - almost every database gives you the option of creating an account. For more information click here.

Zotero - a free tool that many researchers swear by.   Reportedly, the plug-in for the browser works really well.

Notebook - research shows we remember more when we write it down.  (Thank goodness because my handwriting is atrocious.)