Thread by @raulpacheco

THREAD: answering the “how do we decide whether to write an Index Card, a Cornell Note, an entry in my Everything Notebook, etc.”

I get asked this question all the time (by my students and/or workshop participants).

I don’t have hard and fast rules. Here’s an example.

This article is one that I have decided is worth reading in depth (see my triaging strategy raulpacheco.org/2019/08/triagi…)

As a general rule, the first step for me when I read is to do a quick AIC content extraction +CSED entry row raulpacheco.org/2017/12/carvin…

Because I've chosen this as an article I'm going to read in much depth, I need to first decide how much time I'm going to spend on it and how I can systematize what I am going to learn from it.

First step: go through the headings and list them. This gives me the paper structure

I love my handwriting and o know I could literally staple this page on to my Everything Notebook, BUT I prefer to transcribe my notes because I often find stuff in my highlights or scribbles that help me make sense of what I am reading.

Because I know I’m going to find really cool stuff as I read this piece, ideas that will help me teach my students and RAs how to do ethnography, I am ALSO doing a Cornell Note.

Usually I only do Cornell Notes when I have good reason to believe I’m going do quotations often.

Note how I have added a quotation (with corresponding page) to my Cornell Note.

Also note how the authors identify 3 areas of current disagreement about fieldwork - purpose, where it occurs and how long it should be, following them with their own definition.

Irgil et al use each one of these areas of disagreement on what fieldwork entails as both signposts AND Topic Sentences. In three consecutive paragraphs, they pack A LOT of good ideas on why political scientists disagree on what field research entails.

I will write Index Cards.

I can follow each one of this section’s Topic Sentences and write an Index Card based on what I learn from each paragraph.

Note that so far I haven’t highlighted and scribbled this section yet. But now I have a structural guide and specific reading goals and targets.

I use each one of the three sources of disagreement (Topic Sentences) to guide me in how and what I’m going to write in each Index Card.

The first one is on “who does fieldwork and what is it for?”

Here, I already highlighted the first paragraph (of the 3 I’m focusing on right now) - note I didn’t scribble every single row on the margins this time, BUT I could if I wanted to.

Instead, what I would have scribbled in my marginalia ends up in my Index Card. One per paragraph

I have now added a few comments in my marginalia that didn’t end exactly transcribed into my Index Card. I added a comment on how I obtained data on environmental audits for my PhD dissertation thanks to doing fieldwork. These are “extra notes” that I can transfer elsewhere.

So what happens to those "extra" marginalia scribbles? I could do several things:

1) Type them into Mendeley (you can highlight and add marginalia to PDFs).
2) Transcribe them into the "Notes" section of the respective CSED row.
3) Copy them on to the back of this Index Card.

4) Copy them on to my Everything Notebook (I'll probably have an entry for this particular article, where I can add these notes to myself).
5) Copy them on to the Cornell Note I already created for this article.

So many options! Decisions, decisions!

In the end, I believe...

... that these decisions are heuristics we all adopt once we practice note-taking. Below, links to each technique I used here:

- Cornell Notes raulpacheco.org/2018/12/note-t…

- Everything Notebook raulpacheco.org/2018/12/note-t…

- Index Cards raulpacheco.org/2018/11/note-t…

Hope this thread helps!