Suggestions for organization

[Anonymous]

I've just started with the whole research thing, so I appologize if these are rather basic and/or stupid questions.<br>
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I'm looking for suggestions on how to stay organized -- keeping my notes, references, etc orderly and easy to find. I've tried keeping my notes in a Word file, organized by headers, but I've found this quickly gets unwieldy due to the sheer size of the file (it's over 200 pages now). I've thought of perhaps using notecards (ie 3x5 cards) and keeping them in file folders, but I really have zero experience and I'm not sure exactly what to do.<br>
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So I defer to the experience of the boarders. Any suggestions you might have would be wonderful. Thanks! <p></p><i></i>

[Praefectusclassis]

I guess it all depends on what you want to do? Is it for a research project? Or are you gathering data for statistics? <p>Greets<br>
<br>
Jasper</p><i></i>

[Anonymous]

Fiction, actually. <p></p><i></i>

[Frank Miranda]

I've found note cards to work best- you can put key events on one side- perhaps a title and a few key words- almost outline-like. And on the back, you can put either a significant quote from a source, or- if there are too many of these- just source names and page numbers. Number the note cards and keep a master list in order to cross-reference.<br>
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For straight researching, I often started out with an outline- following the example of two professors of mine whom I greatly admire. From there, I would slowly expand it as I developed more info.<br>
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I usually left inputing all of this onto my computer for the very last- but that's because I am an old-fashioned, semi-Luddite who is barely computer-literate.<br>
<p></p><i>Edited by: <A HREF=http://pub45.ezboard.com/bromanarmytalk.showUserPublicProfile?gid=frankmiranda>Frank Miranda</A> at: 6/30/03 7:16 pm<br></i>