The big picture

I just met with Miriam Davis, post-doc research associate. She was so kind and helpful. She gave generously of her time to entertain my questions.

I've been struggling with how to manage and organize the volume of potentially interesting resources/articles I find. I'm still developing my research interests, so I don't really know which articles will be most helpful for my future work. Right now, I want to find out what's out there - what's been done - where are the gaps - and how might I create a significant research question that fits in the literature. 

How do I organize everything I come across? Where do I draw the lines when collecting works of potential interest? I can see how I might quickly collect hundreds articles and not even know what I have!

Miriam affirmed that it's very wise to be thinking about these things now and asking these questions. She shared her ideas and strategies with me. She uses the desktop version of End Note. It seems to have lots of practical application, and looks to be especially helpful when writing papers. It will cite references and add them to the end in a bibliography in just a few simple steps. Citations can be edited and the format changed. (APA, Chicago) In addition, a few interesting fields include abstracts and keywords, and entries can be searched by all fields.  Also, attachments can be added to records.

She also mentioned Zotero, with the Pendergrass Ag-Vet Library recommends. I've looked at the web-based application in the past but have little experience using it for functional research tasks.

Miriam also told me about her friend Trena Paulus from the Department of Educational Psychology. I may like to select my cognate in this area. As Miriam described, her friend is wise, experienced, and an excellent researcher. She has shared many organizational strategies with Miriam. One is to organize/store articles in digital folders (alpha order by primary author last name, for example). Trena teaches Research Methods, a Qualitative Research class, and more. I want to meet Trena!!

A good meeting with Miriam!