Query on note-taking

A reader writes in:

What is the best way to develop a philosophy research journal, or commonplace book? I often find myself pulling from my annotated copies of peer-reviewed philosophy articles when I write. I would rather be drawing from notes of some kind, and verifying my citations in the final stages of my writing process. Unfortunately, when I try to develop a note-taking system for research purposes (for example, the twentieth-century 3-by-5 index card system for research papers) I become wildly inefficient. Should I just stick with my note-taking system of choice until I become efficient? Or should I be approaching this in a different way? Should I just continue researching without systematic note-taking? Is systematic note-taking a waste of time, contra the venerable Kate Turabian?

I don't know how other people would answer these questions, but for my part I don't take many notes. Instead, I have a carefully organized set of folders in my Google Drive where I catalog journal articles I've read, as well as piles of books on or next to my desk or on a bookshelf that I have read. Like this reader, I simply annotate what I've read: I scribble brief notes in book pages as I read, fold page-corners to remember where important things are, and jot brief notes in e-copies of journal articles. Then, when I draft new work (e.g. articles or books), I have a running memory of important things I know I've read, including a fair idea of where I read them. Then, as I write, I'll track down the relevant article in my Google Drive or fish the relevant book out of the pile next to my desk (or on my bookshelf), re-read relevant passages and my annotations. I think this method requires a pretty good memory--so I imagine taking detailed notes might work better for some people. Finally, on that note, sometimes I do jot down brief ideas in the 'notes' app in my iPhone, which I find helpful for remembering ideas I've had that might slip my mind later.

Anyway, that's what I do, and I guess I'd suggest to the reader if the annotating method works fairly well for them, they might as well stick to it. But that's just my offhand guess. What do you all do? Any advice for this reader?

Comments

[Ross Colebrook]

Zotero is an extremely useful application for this. I've got all the articles I've ever used set up in Zotero, and a plugin for Chrome that allows Zotero to pull a citation and the associated PDF from my web browser. Once it's in Zotero, I can open it in Adobe Acrobat Pro and annotate it as I like. I can even add notes to the article within Zotero, and easily search based on author, title, year, etc.

Not only that, there's also a word plugin that allows you to pull up Zotero and add a citation to whatever word doc you're using. As long as you add all your citations this way, once you're done writing, you just have Zotero compile a bibliography automatically. It takes some getting used to, and setting up, but for anybody writing dissertation-length stuff, or academic articles, it's invaluable!

[Danny]

I'm not a very organized note taker - all of my notes are either in PDF copies of articles (I write my thoughts in notes on the PDF), in Microsoft Word documents that hang out in folders dedicated to each project, or in a Scrivener note in the overall Scrivener project. I back up everything so at least the notes are resistant to destruction, if not easily browsable. A friend recently released a computer program that helps organize philosophical note taking which I haven't tried, but which people might be interested in: http://hypernomicon.org