organising research and facilitating writing: 10 tools in 10 mins

Organising Research and Facilitating Writing

-10 Tools in 10 minutes

Nick Blackbourn, University of St Andrews http://nickblackbourn.com@nickblackbourn

http://nickblackbourn.com/

What is ‘digital’ research?

Or just part of life?

Something new and different?

‘Digital’ tools shouldn’t be intimidating…


(I suggest not!)


A Case Study: Me

What follows is my own workflow

It’s not perfect, but it works for me…

…accept, reject & adapt for yourself!

(tell me if I’m doing it wrong…)



10 Tools to assist research and writing



1 – The One Thing

Ultimately all you really need:

Text Editor

…but you can make things easier on yourself!



2 – Reading

How to Read?

- Skim (PDF Viewer)

- Kindle

… real book

You are going to read a lot, how will you do it?



3 – Note Taking

If there aren’t notes, it’s not been read...

- Create Text File

- Handwriting

Digitise it so you won’t lose it in 3-years time



4 – Capturing Material

Camera & Stand

- Recreate the archive on your computer

- Minimise travel time

- Deep thinking at home with a cup of tea



5 – Database

Storing & retrieving archival material

- Devonthink

- Evernote

- Just use a file structure

Where to keep your research?How to organise it?How to retrieve it?BACK IT UP OFTEN



6 – Idea Generation

Mind-mapping / List-making

- Freemind

- Omnioutliner

- Text Editor

Get ideas on the page, worry about if they’re good later



7 – Drafting

Creating the first draft

- Scrivener

Easy to move structure around

Focus on generating text and developing ideas, not editing/formatting

Make writing easy – form a habit‘Bad writing is part of the journey towards good writing’



8 – Citing

Dealing with references

- Zotero- Mendeley- Cite-u-Like

Update as you go along, saves a lot of time later!

‘If it’s not in Zotero it’s not been found’



9 – Editing / Formatting

Dealing with the beast

- MS Office

- Print preview- Margins / Fonts / Size- Headings / Metastructure

Makes it ‘real’ (and therefore scarier!) – so wait until you’re ready



10 – Sharing

Don’t be afraid to share: Blog

- Wordpress- Twitter

Ask your questions in public to position yourself as someone who thinks about your topic!

Learn from your network



Conclusion

To complete a PhD you need just two attributes:

1) Determination

2) Organisation

Think about the tasks ahead of you and how you intend to complete them.

Break things down and ask yourself what tool works best for the job.

Questions?: I can be found here @nickblackbourn



organising research and facilitating writing: 10 tools in 10 mins

Education