Literature notes
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2 responses to “Literature notes”
Thank you for this information, Micheal.
I have used Mendeley for the last 8 years or so and I just find it so hard to move to a new platform after I have now loaded all the necessary plugins for Word and all of those.
I tried Zotero many moons ago, so perhaps a good idea to revisit.
That being said, I have a question about taking literature notes- sometimes when engaging in dense topics, it is really hard for me to filter what is useful and what isn’t. How do you manage some of your filters (mentally and on paper) when taking literary notes?There’s nothing inherently wrong with Mendeley and for most people it’s a great option.
Regarding your second question, I suppose it depends on what you mean by ‘useful’. If I’m reading for a project I’m currently busy with, I’ll probably ignore everything that isn’t directly related to that project. In this case, I probably won’t take any notes besides the specific parts that I’m using. But, if I’m reading more broadly, I’ll pretty much capture anything that’s interesting. Something that I’ve recently realised is that information I’m extracting because it’s interesting tends to be quite in-depth, and I spend a lot of time integrating it with other notes. But information that I capture for utility (i.e. because I need it in the moment) tends to be more disconnected from other notes, and shorter / less detailed. It might be because when I’m reading for interest, I have more time and more head space to explore connections. And when I’m reading to get a job done, I’m more focused on the work and not the notes.
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