Tips for organizing research for a nonfiction book
June 11, 2020 3:53 PM Subscribe
I have discovered an online treasure trove of articles and other resources for a nonfiction book project I'm working on, but I am at a loss how to organize them in any sort of logical, accessible way.
Right now I'm putting PDFs of articles relevant to a specific chapter in a folder devoted to that chapter, but there might be a sentence or two in an article that also are relevant to another chapter (say chapter 5). In a perfect world I could copy and paste those sentences onto a sort of "notecard" that could go into the folder for chapter 5, but maybe someone has already thought of this and there is an easy, tech-y solution I'm unaware of?
Right now I'm putting PDFs of articles relevant to a specific chapter in a folder devoted to that chapter, but there might be a sentence or two in an article that also are relevant to another chapter (say chapter 5). In a perfect world I could copy and paste those sentences onto a sort of "notecard" that could go into the folder for chapter 5, but maybe someone has already thought of this and there is an easy, tech-y solution I'm unaware of?
Best answer: Endnote has a bit of a learning curve, but is a common tool in academia for this kind of thing I think.
posted by freethefeet at 4:41 PM on June 11, 2020
posted by freethefeet at 4:41 PM on June 11, 2020
Best answer: If you use Zotero, install the Zotfile add on. It will find any highlighting or annotations you make in the PDFs and extract them as attached notes so they are searchable and exportable.
posted by Trivia Newton John at 5:21 PM on June 11, 2020
posted by Trivia Newton John at 5:21 PM on June 11, 2020
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Alexandra Samuel's recent JSTOR Daily blog entry describes her workflow with this combination.
posted by zepheria at 4:20 PM on June 11, 2020 [3 favorites]