I'm currently reading The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt, and each chapter cites to hundreds of unique sources. This got me wondering: during the research stage, how did the author capture the key information from hundreds or thousands of sources, and then how does the author organize the information into a way that facilitates marshalling it all into a narrative? I assume there are some sorts of formal note taking/cataloging systems historians can choose to use. What are they?
Just found this on Robert Caro: http://www.robertcaro.com/writers-at-work/