I remember being told in grad school by a professor that he still used 3x5 cards when researching a new article or book. I know another professor who has a wall in his office of about 5 or 6 file cabinets with another row of cabinets set on top (he uses a stepladder). I've heard others mention using Evernote, OneNote, or Zotero to manage sources and such (I've not used all of them myself).
I've now amassed photocopies, digital copies, photos, old drafts, scribbled notes to myself, etc., and I'm wondering if I'm choosing the best way of managing it all.
How do you manage information and sources collected in your research? Do you have a method for keeping and later retrieving research or ideas for future projects?
What are the history field's best practices for organizing stuff? What strategies, tips, or tools would you recommend?
tl;dr... I use endnote for digital sources/archival material; use journals to start projects; and experiment with organization during the project; and then use digital for longterm storage.
I use EndNote as my database manager for keeping track of scanned primary source documents, articles, papers, chapter sections; pretty much anything on my computer related to research projects.
Otherwise it depends on the project. Sometimes I have used colored note cards to organize quotations, facts, figures, and notes from a project into thematic groups [each color being a theme], just so i could start visualizing how things came together.
Or I've used just a word document to cut and past basically the same thing into an order I like; or printed out something and cut up the different notes, citations, what have you and then organized them. It sort of depends on what feels right.
Otherwise I usually start a project with its own little notebook; a spiral or moleskin, or something like that, in which I take notes and just keep track of what I need to find, library call numbers, microfilm reels, important quotes, themes, ideas, and usually fill up a good chunk of the notebook that way before eventually organizing it more into my computer and then doing on of the methods I mentioned above. I'm honestly still figuring out my favorite way to organize research; its an evolving practice, especially as technology evolves.
I try my best to keep everything digital; and backed up in multiple places. I have moved around a fair bit so that I hate always having to move cartons of papers and what not. So I have a few file folders with physical materials- like the organization papers/cards- but otherwise I limit myself so I don't build up more paper material than I can handle.
As far as future ideas for projects; I just enter them into my phone send them to the cloud and sort them out every so often; pair up ideas that belong together, are similar, or might involve checking similar sources; group ideas that I know others might be more interested in pursuing or better equipped than myself; and put in deep storage ideas that are fanciful, but not realistic research to do right now. I would also make sure this file is backed up in multiple places! You never know when you need a novel idea.
I don't think there's one right way to do these kinds of things. My boss at an art museum where I worked used color coded folders, and I knew another person who worked there who had taken over another office because he wanted literally every source he ever used on hand. My father has written five books and keeps literally everything on his office floor. Not in piles, just on the floor.
Personally, I have a really good memory, so I rarely take notes (I know, I know, but I find it easier to just remember things than to write down a bunch of stuff that is generally useless later). Once I know generally what I'm looking for, I'll bookmark pages in books that have useful information and keep them on my shelf/pile and print out useful articles. If it's a big project, I'll probably put books and articles on the same topic together, but most of the projects I wind up doing aren't that big.
At any rate, whatever works for you is fine.