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The research gathering phase is one where the benefits of technology really shine. If you are working with notebooks and scraps of paper - or even word processing files scattered across your compter - it is all to easy to misplace items. More importantly, it is easy to forget to note down bibliographic information that can really cost you time later.
In this phase, you'll be working your way through your reading list, gathering research notes -- data, quotes, and other materials to (possibly) include in your discussion. Nearly everyone tends to approach this process in a similar manner: we read through a work, marking portions of text that might be useful to our own research - providing valuable facts, corroborating our own research findings, or providing expert opinions we need to address. Or maybe we find what looks like the perfect quote . . . If you are working with a bibliographic database program like Citation, you can really get organized and efficient with what happens after you finish reading. If you take the time to do just a few things when you've finished reading - you'll be much better prepared (and much happier, as well, I might add) when you're finished researching the issue and need to start writing. Here's what to do: as soon as you finish reading a work on your list, spend some time at your computer. In your database, remove the word "read" from the keyword field, and then check the publication to make certain the bibliographic record in your database is accurate (check for the edition number, that you have the full names of authors, the correct year of publication, editor name, journal pages, that sort of thing). (If the work wasn't on your reading list, obviously, this is the time to enter a bibliographic record for it.) If you have questions about entering a record for a particular type of work, consult Citation's StyleGuide. Once you have the bibliographic information in your database, enter note records for the passages you've highlighted as possibly useful for your discussion. Make sure you include specific page references for quotes (this is essential to citing the passage properly), and enter keywords to tag the sources and notes as having to do with particular aspects of your topic. Last -- and this is really an important step -- take a quick look at the footnotes and bibliography for this work. If any of them look like works you need to read, add them to your reading list.
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