These programs make your information searchable and organize information by type. Zotero, DevonTHINK Pro (Mac), and Evernote are all powerful options for creating your own personal research database. Using a notebook, database, or citation program allows you to store and organize your information rather than hoarding everything in a single MS Word file.
Use database or note-taking software to store notes and research data, and put everything in that one place. The most effective way to organize your research into a personal database is to use a single program to centralize and organize your notes. It helps us find and store information in an organized manner and it helps us be more efficient when analyzing our data and evidence. Treating our research and notes like a personal database allows for easier access to our information. In other words, we don’t usually treat our research notes and files as information in a database. Rather than a clearly organized system, our information is often stored in unlabeled stacks of notebooks, hundreds of individual Word documents, or a single file with all of our notes arranged in no particular order. Often, this feeling is a result of poor organization. The sheer volume of information we store for our research can be overwhelming- especially when we try to figure out what is important to our main argument for an article or dissertation chapter. The question is: do we treat our research notes as a personal database? On the scale of databases, they are small and specialized, to be sure, but they are nevertheless databases of information. When we store and organize this information in notes, computers, or notebooks, we are creating databases. The more we read and research, the more information we have. In fact, most of us produce our very own database every time we perform research. What fewer of us think about, however, is that our work does not only rely on databases. They store troves of information and articles, and we search them on a pretty regular basis when researching our topics. You can find her on Twitter of us in graduate school are familiar with databases.
Kelly Hanson is a PhD candidate in English at Indiana University, Bloomington.
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