Upgrade StorageRequest for ADVICE on organising information in notes
Okay I'll try to make this as short as possible. Sorry if it comes out a bit angsty, I'm a first year PhD in history and am at a crisis point in my dissertation. I need to start writing, but first I must organize. I am sure most of you have been there.
When I started trying to organise my research I chose zotero over a personal wiki because it seemed like less work. So I grabbed my sources and tagged them in various tags and saved a link to the word document where I kept my notes, as I have always done. I have been doing this with my research since September plus I have two years of research for my MA which was on a related topic. I figured I would go through and add "notes" for each idea and tag those, appropriately, too. But I never really got around to doing that to any great extent.
Enter urgent need for organization. My tags were a sticky quagmire of random pieces of information despite some initial attempts at categorizing them. There was no way to distinguish between tags that applied to sources (people) such as gender, front, role, organization etc, and content such as propriety, danger, typhus and mud. Not to mention there were about 500 of them, some of which entirely unnecessary, and others consisting of cute turns of phrases such as "this place sucks" and "noisy western front" which, while intriguing, are somewhat lacking in specificity. I have now pretty much solved that problem by attaching a number (or uncat: ) in front of each tag that applied to content (the number is the number of the chapter it will go in) but yet, I angst on. [Any suggestions on how to further improve tagging systems would be greatly appreciated.]
The motto for zotero is Goodbye 3” x 5” cards. Hello Zotero. Great. But I have never used 3 x 5 cards. I just printed out my word documents and used different colors of highlighters for themes and complex numbering and lettering outlining systems. My supervisor, quite rightly, pointed out that this won't work for a PhD. There's just too much information. She's right. But now I'm trying to do the equivalent of 3x5 cards on zotero and not only is it taking FOREVER I don't like it. By separating each piece of information you lose the context of the word document. Plus it takes forever. I'm trying to compromise by taking separating all the info for one topic from each source into chunks and then making one "note" out of the chunk. This is slightly less time consuming but then you get all kinds of tidbits wrapped up in as well. I can't think of any better way to explain my problem so I will just give a really specific example (sorry this is long). One "note' reads:
Obviously the major theme for this notes is gender roles and relations, but there's a lot of other stuff mixed in there as well. Hence the other tags.
But the problem is, those tidbits that relate to those other tags are not as easily identifiable as had they been separate notes. If I take it out it loses the context. If I copy it I have duplicate info. I've done both so far, not sure which is the lesser of two evils. When I start writing, how will I be able to tell which information I have "used" already?
Never mind the fact that retrieving this information in a way that will be useful is going to take a much more thorough knowledge of computer manipulations than I ever hoped to have. My brother stole all -- literally ALL -- of the computer-related brain cells in my family. Just looking at some of the answers to the FAQ makes my head want to explode.
Still. I figure that since Zotero is being developed at a center for history SURELY THERE IS A WAY.
Anyway PLEASE let me know if you have any suggestions of if you do things a better way yourself.
When I started trying to organise my research I chose zotero over a personal wiki because it seemed like less work. So I grabbed my sources and tagged them in various tags and saved a link to the word document where I kept my notes, as I have always done. I have been doing this with my research since September plus I have two years of research for my MA which was on a related topic. I figured I would go through and add "notes" for each idea and tag those, appropriately, too. But I never really got around to doing that to any great extent.
Enter urgent need for organization. My tags were a sticky quagmire of random pieces of information despite some initial attempts at categorizing them. There was no way to distinguish between tags that applied to sources (people) such as gender, front, role, organization etc, and content such as propriety, danger, typhus and mud. Not to mention there were about 500 of them, some of which entirely unnecessary, and others consisting of cute turns of phrases such as "this place sucks" and "noisy western front" which, while intriguing, are somewhat lacking in specificity. I have now pretty much solved that problem by attaching a number (or uncat: ) in front of each tag that applied to content (the number is the number of the chapter it will go in) but yet, I angst on. [Any suggestions on how to further improve tagging systems would be greatly appreciated.]
The motto for zotero is Goodbye 3” x 5” cards. Hello Zotero. Great. But I have never used 3 x 5 cards. I just printed out my word documents and used different colors of highlighters for themes and complex numbering and lettering outlining systems. My supervisor, quite rightly, pointed out that this won't work for a PhD. There's just too much information. She's right. But now I'm trying to do the equivalent of 3x5 cards on zotero and not only is it taking FOREVER I don't like it. By separating each piece of information you lose the context of the word document. Plus it takes forever. I'm trying to compromise by taking separating all the info for one topic from each source into chunks and then making one "note" out of the chunk. This is slightly less time consuming but then you get all kinds of tidbits wrapped up in as well. I can't think of any better way to explain my problem so I will just give a really specific example (sorry this is long). One "note' reads:
The tags are: 6.gender roles, 6.on:br wm, 6.propriety, 6.rel:gender, 6.sleeping arrangements, 7.rel:inter-unit, 7.retreat, 7.this place sucks [yeah I kept this one], uncat:birthdays, uncat:self-sacrifice6 escorting women on the retreat [note title]
8 Nov "Sir Ralph Paget has asked us to escort 5 ladies and 3 hospital orderlies with us and this we have agreed to do. The ladies are Dr. Hamilton and 3 of her unit from Montenegro (the Matron, Miss W. Eham & Miss Weaver) and Mrs Moore goes in charge of them."
9 Nov en route to prizerend: "Owing to the lateness of the hour we slept in our carriage (Officers & ladies) & the men in the trucks all night.
10 November describing "cold and comfortless" camping grounds. "Gave our beds to the nurses.
Have only made good about 15 kms today.
My birthday."
14 November Prizirend. "find the nurses a great acquisition in the way of making tea for us &c."
17 Nov Elliot escorting the ladies.
19 "found a hay loft for the ladies, officers & men sleeping in the open without tent."
21 Nov "one room for the officers & ladies and 2 rooms for the men in an Albanian house."
22 Nov "We much admired the nurses powers of sticking it but they are tonight really petered out & must have at least one day's rest. Broke open an empty kafana and took possession of rooms for Quarters."
23 Nov "the First B. Field Hospt (with 17 ladies) also arrived last night." (Dibra)
26 Nov Arrived Monastir with officers, nurses and 2 of the First British Field Hospital, in a motor with Lieutenant Thomas (?) driving.
"Our responsibility for the ladies now ceased."
7 December "Elliot & I went on board "Victorians" in afternoon to say good-bye to nurses."
20 December "S.S. Sydney, with nurses from Serbia on board, in harbour; we gave them some tea and went aboard after dinner."
Major and Mrs Elliot mentioned 21, 23. 25 December
Obviously the major theme for this notes is gender roles and relations, but there's a lot of other stuff mixed in there as well. Hence the other tags.
But the problem is, those tidbits that relate to those other tags are not as easily identifiable as had they been separate notes. If I take it out it loses the context. If I copy it I have duplicate info. I've done both so far, not sure which is the lesser of two evils. When I start writing, how will I be able to tell which information I have "used" already?
Never mind the fact that retrieving this information in a way that will be useful is going to take a much more thorough knowledge of computer manipulations than I ever hoped to have. My brother stole all -- literally ALL -- of the computer-related brain cells in my family. Just looking at some of the answers to the FAQ makes my head want to explode.
Still. I figure that since Zotero is being developed at a center for history SURELY THERE IS A WAY.
Anyway PLEASE let me know if you have any suggestions of if you do things a better way yourself.
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Your idea for numbering tags to categorize them is a good one. Tags offer a excellent long term system for organizing your library. You might consider creating collections and sub-collections for each section of your project. You can than drag in relevant items as you go. In this model you use tags as a upfront way to organize your items and notes and then use the collections to start structuring those first impressions into something more organized.
Also don't underestimate the power of basic searches and sorting. When all your notes are aggregated in Zotero alongside the metadata about the actual objects you can quickly search through your whole database whenever you need to, and you can sort your collections by any facet of the metadata.
For many users, advanced searches are the most powerful means to work with research collections. On your question about identifying things you have already used. Consider creating another, more practical category of tags. Things like "8. must use", "8. already used", "8. print out", "8. Already Printed." Then you can set up saved searches, one where "tag" [is] "8. must use" and one where "tag" [is] "8. already used." You can then focus these advanced searches through further refinements. Consider breaking them down by item type, author, date published, page number, etc.
The last thing I would suggest is that all of these features, collections, tags, basic searches, and advanced searches work in an additive fashion. For example, lets say you now have 40 items in a sub-collection, on the historiography of race in the American West, in your Introduction collection. Inside this sub-collection all the other tools are still available and faceted to the needs within that given collection. You can use your tags, now winnowed down to a more easily handled set of forty or fifty, to explore how complete your sources are for that section. You can also use the saved search function where "collection" [is] "historiography of race in the west", and then add any additional caveats for types of sources, or dates on sources, or number of pages, really whatever the relevant data points in the given context are.
These are just a few general thoughts about how I think about the different features and capabilities. Undoubtedly there are better approaches, but for my needs this works quite well.
I organize everything using tags and saved searches and have been pretty happy with zotero functions on this so far. I tag everything by chapter (ch1, ch2), subject (concepts, events, people), and use ("read this", "cite this" etc.). Then when I work on a particular chapter, i create a number of saved searches for that chapter, i.e. "01 property", "01 get this", "01 newspaper sources", "01 some event". You can narrow down such saved searches to an incident you want to analyze or a paragraph on a particular historiographic point. Then, when I'm done working on that chapter, I delete all of these saved searches and move on to the next chapter--but i can still recreate all of those collections later if i wish to. I couldn't work with regular collections this way--there would just be too many of them and i would get confused about what goes where. In addition, I create saved searches on key theoretical subjects related to my work, i.e. "nationalism", "gender", "frankfurt school," for my reference.
in your case, i would have separate tags for chapters and subjects, i.e. "ch1" and "gender"--then you won't have to create multiple tags such as "1. gender", "2. gender", "3. gender" etc.
i would second tjowens on having tags like "must use" and "already used" i would separate all notes from your example above, tag all of them as "gender", tag each of them with a chapter tag and with particular additional tags you mention, and start each note with a page number. then create saved searches on each of these tags.
then, in a saved search on gender, they will all appear together, sorted by page number, under the same source. this way you'll be able to see them in context just as you do in your word document. a report on this saved search will print all these notes together in page number order, just as they appear now in your word document.
in a saved search on "self-sacrifice" only one of these notes will be selected, together with other notes on self-sacrifice anywhere in your research (this will only happen if you separate chapter numbering and subjects). a report on this saved search will print all the notes on self-sacrifice together, showing relationships you can't see in your word document.
in a saved search on a particular chapter, only the notes tagged for this chapter will be selected--that's when you can start tagging them as "used" or "must use," to make sure you include them in your chapter.
you can toggle between these three different saved searches to keep in mind all these sets of relationships while you're writing. then delete the searches when you move on to other topics.
i would keep the tags as short as possible, to see them more easily in a tag viewer.