I know that many of you on BF are or were grad students at one point in your schooling. Thought I'd throw this one question out there. How do you keep track of all your notes that you make after you've read through literally hundreds and hundreds of papers?? Especially if you're working towards a PhD, year after year of papers and notes piling up. Do you employ any software packages? A database? Massive notebooks after notebooks? It just seems so overwhelming the amount of information I am generating. How about all those ideas you come up with as you're working on your thesis? What strategies did you use or are using maybe right now? Love to hear about your experience and thoughts on this
keep hard copies, organize them chronologically when you read them. keep the notes with them. i tend to go, "yeah, i read something 2 yrs ago about blah." that the way i found work alright, but you are right, after a few years, the pile gets quite high, but imagine, even if you read one / week, after 8 yrs, that's only 400 papers. not too bad.
Organizing info is probably more fundamental then I think. Back in high school...those my notes were illegible. Meaning they were useless. Same thing now..even though I'm in second year doing a bachelor's degree. So I end up writing a neat copy just before exams begin. And they are condensed. When I'm not lazy..I'll type them up. Since I'm in CS..maybe I oughta develop some software that PHD students can use to manage info What's nice is that the info can then be indexed by keywords and date, so you can search it faster. But then you can always just publish your notes on the web..and use google
Want to stay organized? Just do what Mike Slackenary does!!! He's the master at it! www.phdcomics.com And here is my personal favourite -- Newton's Law on Graduation GL with that thesis, Nelson! -Rick
