Communication

Organizing Research

Now that you have located all of your sources and analyzed the content, you may want to organize your information. The organization of research information is important because it provide you, your professors, and your peers the ability to see how your chosen sources connect to your research topic in an accessible, comprehensible way. It also allows other scholars to "citation link" when doing research, meaning they can easily find the original space of a source and other sources that are connected to the subject of focus.

Annotated Bibliography

If you haven't already, you will be required to complete an annotated bibliography for one of your courses before completing your undergraduate degree. Completing an annotated bibliography is the classic way to organize your research and is a great starting place for those who like to do their work by hand.

Click here for Purdue Owl's examples of annotated bibliographies or view the video shown below. 

Tools

An annotated bibliography isn't the only way to organize your research; there are several open access software you can use (for free) to achieve the same concept.

We recommend starting with Zotero.

However, there are other options, including:

Mendeley

Notion

Obsidian

These software do have capacity limits, so be sure to update and clear out your information as you complete different research projects. Remember - they are free - please contact your subject librarian if you have access issues.