Drafting the Paper:
Organizing Notes
References and Resources
As you begin to write your paper, you should first review your notes by re-reading all of your note cards. This process will re-fresh your memory about the materials you had found during your research.
There are a couple of strategies that researchers have found are helpful ways to organize notes.
- Strategy #1: Organize by Topic
Organize your research notes by general topic. For example, if you were writing a paper on Sri Lanka, You might organize your note cards into the following categories:
- Facts and Statistics
History
Culture
Geography
Religion
Current Events
The categories used in this example were taken from "Sri Lanka", a web site developed by the Asia Studies Center at Michigan State University.
Please Note: You would not want a single research paper to cover all of these topics. More focus would be required for an effective paper.
- Strategy #2: Organize from Outline
Some researchers prefer to begin their paper by constructing an outline. Your professor might even require an outline as part of the writing process.
Once the outline is finished, they organize their cards according to the sections of their paper. If you use this strategy, you might want to write the section number of the paper on each note card.
