ENG 400 - Harding Spring 2024

A research paper the size of your capstone is made exponentially easier with a good organization strategy. Many of you have topics that will involve long reading lists that span multiple research areas. Organization is key to make sure that you're making the best use of your time.

There is not a universal strategy for organizing your resources. Below are some tips that can help regardless of whether your strategy is a document filled with permalinks and notes or a full blown citation manager.

1. Always double check that the link you saved for a resource is a permalink or stable URL. There is little more heartbreaking in the research process than saving dozen of resources only to have the links break because they were not permalinks.
2. Make sure you include as much bibliographic information in your notes about a source as possible. It will help you speed up the citation process later on.
3. Establish some sort of system for noting what you already read and if it was helpful or not. You will read a lot, and while not all of it will be helpful, a lot of it will begin to run together. Having something that you can go back and refer to about your impressions of the source will be helpful when you begin to write and when you are working on your bibliography.

The library's Discovery Search has its own built in research organizer. With your W&J login, you can sign in when you are searching in Discovery and save resources to your folder. However, it is imperative that you make sure you are signed-in every time or your resources will not be saved!

Below is a tutorial of how to access the folder.

1. search in Discovery.

2. On the results page, click on the "sign in" button in the top right corner (screenshot included below).

3. Once you're signed in, the left most button in the right hand corner should be the "Folder" button.

4. To save a resource, click on it and then click the save button on the right hand side of the screen (screenshot included below).

5. To access the articles again, click on the Folder button anytime you are signed in.