Writing Textbooks Boundless Writing The Research Process Using Your Sources
Writing Textbooks Boundless Writing The Research Process
Writing Textbooks Boundless Writing
Writing Textbooks
Writing
Concept Version 18
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Taking Useful Notes on Your Sources

Taking organized notes on your sources as you do research will be helpful when you begin writing.

Learning Objective

  • Describe useful note-taking strategies

Key Points

    • Notes should not only include bibliographic information, but also relevant arguments, quotes, and page numbers.
    • Systematizing your note-taking while doing research will reduce the need to aimlessly search through all your sources when you transition into writing. Taking notes now, even though it may feel frustrating, is in your best interest in the long run.
    • Use the full citation as your heading for each segment of notes you take. That way, you can be sure to have the citation ready when you start writing your paper.

Term

  • citation

    A paraphrase of a passage from a book, or from another person, for the purposes of a scholarly paper.

Example

    • Consider the following source: Aldiss, Brian W. "On the Origin of Species: Mary Shelley." Speculations on Speculation: Theories of Science Fiction. Eds. James Gunn and Matthew Candelaria. Lanham, Maryland: Scarecrow, 2005. Notes for this source might look like this: "Aldiss discusses the relationship between Erasmus Darwin, Charles Darwin's grandfather, and the text of Frankenstein. See especially page five where Aldiss points out that the introduction includes references to galvanism and electricity."

Full Text

Why Take Notes While Researching?

While most of your research will take place before you begin writing, you will still refer to your resources throughout the writing process. This will be much easier if you take thorough notes while reading through your sources during the initial research phase.

The goal of note-taking is to keep a record of whatever information you might want to use later. Your notes should be as thorough as they need to be, but not too long that they are no longer useful to you. If you summarize information, make sure you include whatever you might want to incorporate in your paper. If you think a quote will be useful, write it down in full. Avoid copying whole paragraphs or pages, though; instead, decide exactly what is useful to you on that page and write only that down. You want to be able to look through your notes later on and easily see what information you found useful. 

Organizing Your Notes

Organizing your notes is just as important as taking quality notes. You will need to track exactly which source each note came from so that you can properly cite your sources throughout your writing. Thus, the first thing you should do when taking notes is to write down the full citation for the source on which you are taking notes. This will help you find the source later on if you need to, and will ensure that you still have the complete citation even if you lose the source or have to return it to the library. Organizing notes by source also ensures that you will never lose track of how you need to cite them in your paper, so beginning with citation information provides a useful heading.

In addition to labeling each source, always be sure to write down the page numbers where you found whatever information you've written down. You will need to know the page number when you cite that information in your paper.

There are several methods for organizing your notes while researching, such as the following:

  • Index cards: You may want to create an index card or set of cards for each source you use. You can then store the cards in order and can easily sort through them to find the notes you need. 
  • Online sources such as Microsoft OneNote: OneNote is a digital notebook that allows you to create new pages, tabs, and notebooks for your notes. You can quickly navigate between pages, and you will have the advantage of already having important quotations and citation information in typed form. This makes it easy to incorporate notes into your paper during the writing process.
  • Organize by subtopic: Some sources may provide information on several subtopics that relate to your argument. You can choose to organize your notes for each source by subtopic so that when you get to that topic in your essay, you can easily find the notes on it. You can do this by creating headings or subheadings within your notes.

Taking notes

Some people use index cards to organize their notes while researching.

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