(Marie Slim, Works Cited Slips ans Source cards, CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)
After completing this module, you will be able to:
Most problems with citations begin at the note-taking stage. Three common problems are:
Needless to say, finding and organizing your notes and corresponding research is key to a successful research paper.
(Jazz DiMauro, Everyware Notes, CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)
Go with the old standard. Paper index cards are a simple and straightforward way to help organize your research and a favorite among many researchers. Make sure you have a system in place for how to organize the information on the cards as well as how to organize the cards themselves.
(sagesolar, Google Keep note art, CC BY 2.0)
Select an online tool to organize your research. There are many free and simple to use tools available.
One example is Google Keep, a Google product of online sticky notes. These notes are shareable, searchable, and taggable, which makes them very useful for research and projects. They integrate seamlessly with Google Docs to help you organize your research and take notes.
Another online tool, Trello, organizes your research into individual cards. You can provide notes, links to sources, and images within each expandable, electronic notecard.
(Karin Dalzie, Zotero up close, CC BY-NC 2.0)
Zotero, Mendeley, and RefWorks are online cloud applications to collect, organize, and format citations (as well as the actual sources themselves!). They can download full citation information from anything on the web, store and organize citations in folders, and create in-text citations and full bibliographies according to citation styles (MLA, APA, etc.) in your paper. While they take some upfront time to set up, they will save you time in the long run.
(Vossler, 2016)
The content for this module was drawn from the following sources:
Kearney, V. (2020, July 17). Examples of summary, quotation and paraphrase. Owlcation. https://owlcation.com/academia/Examples-of-Summary-Quotation-and-Paraphrase
LAUNCH: Undergraduate Research, Texas A&M University. (2016, April 29). Understanding copyright as an undergraduate Researcher. Let us LAUNCH “U” into research! https://tamuugr.wordpress.com/2016/04/29/understanding-copyright-as-an-undergraduate-researcher/
Runge, S. (2019, September 19). Citing with integrity: How to organize sources. Boston College Libraries Research Guides. https://libguides.bc.edu/ethical-source-use/ethical-source-use-how
Sevryugina, Y. V. (2020, May 20). Navigating science databases. Discovering scholarly literature by using science literature databases. Canvas Commons. https://lor.instructure.com/resources/cd04930f17bd489a8cbfcc9a946bd170?shared
Vossler, J. (2016). Organizing sources [Video]. Vimeo. https://vimeo.com/210805905
Take a screenshot or photograph of your completed work after completing the following scenario:
You are writing a paper on the biological invasion of grey squirrels in Europe. You found four quotes online, but now need to prepare them for your paper.
Organize the following four sources and their corresponding quotes by one of the three methods mentioned (paper index cards, basic online tools, or advanced online tools). Use steps 1 - 3 listed under “Make sure to thoroughly annotate your citations” along with the organizational method.
See the Google doc here for quiz questions and answers. Please note, this document is stored on the PALNI team drive and is only accessible to those who work in a PALNI school.
All of the PALNI Information Literacy Modules are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.