(As a fun anecdote: it was only five years ago when I took an intro to the history major course at BYU, and my instructor was teaching us how to keep notes on notecards. #Mellel keeps switching back to underline how to# Personally, I’m a big fan of using Evernote, which was recommended to me when I bought my iPad (perhaps my best grad school purchase, but that’s another story). I like it because it allows you to categorize everything into themed notebooks as well as tags. For instance, my dissertation focuses on three different states during the early American period-Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, and South Carolina-so I have different notebooks for each area’s primary sources. I also have notebooks for my notes on secondary literature, which are also separated into period, area, and theme. I then make sure to be consistant with about a dozen thematic tags (I try to keep it basic, like gender, nationalism, politics, etc.) as well as subject tags (mostly names of those involved) so that I can cross-search across different collections by simply clicking on “gender politics” or “Benjamin Rush.” Another great thing about Evernote is that it is synced through a cloud service so I can access my notes wherever I want: on my iPad, on my home computer, or on any of the computers at the library. It also allows you to save pictures and other images the same way you save text. So, for example, today I read a sermon ( An Essay on the Influence of Religion in Civil Society) by Thomas Reese, a minister in late-eighteenth century Charleston, on the importance of submitting to authority as a key tenet of Christian faith. If there were any interesting images, I would have taken a picture with my iPad camera and attached it to the note as well, but alas it was all text.įirst I created a new “note” titled “Reese, Influence of Religion (1788)” which is filed in my notebook titled “Dissertation: South Carolina.” I added the tags “Reese,” “religion,” “Charleston,” and “authority.” After gisting the sermon’s main message and transcribing relevant quotes, I save and sync it to my account’s internet cloud. I then moved on to the next secondary book on my ridiculously-long reading list, Rachel Klein’s Unification of a Slave State. I make a new note and save it in the notebook, “South Carolina Historiography.” You get the picture.Īfter reading, which usually takes up my morning, I typically spend the afternoon writing. I’m a big believer in constantly writing as you research while everything is fresh in your mind, and I try to write at least one to two hours per day. I usually try to digest what I had read that morning or some of the main ideas that have been percolating in my mind over the past week. Like a true 21st century nerd, my writing is in the form of a private blog that I set up so I can just write away and easily find what I wrote. #Mellel keeps switching back to underline how to#.
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