When you're working on an assignment or studying, you will make lots of notes and gather lots of references to authors, book titles, journal articles, web pages and other sources that you will want to remember and go back to. It can be really easy to lose track of these, so it’s a good idea to have a system in place to organise them.
For printed material, you will need some stationery. You might want to keep separate files for every module on your course or you might prefer a single, large format ring binder, divided into appropriate sections, to contain everything - it's up to you to decide what will work best for you.
Either way, you may want to divide your file by different topics. Use multicoloured A4 divider sheets to keep topics separate. Write a meaningful title on the tab of the dividers that you use to help you quickly retrieve what you're looking for.
If your working on an assignment and don't want to use referencing software, you can use a small file box with alphabetically indexed cards for retrieving references or creating a reference list. Use an expandable file folder to store assignment notes and sources.
Minimum suggested filing system (from the Emerald Publishing Guide to Filing for Beginners)
There are plenty of ways of storing soft copies of your material
Dropbox and Google Drive are for storing files. For capturing and storing material directly from the web, then try:
Pocket and basic Evernote are free, and your saved material is stored in the cloud. Just be aware a lot of the web and services provided on the web can be here today and gone tomorrow, so do think about backing up your content.
You can also use referencing software to store material that you accumulate in the course of your studies. Referencing software has the added advantage of creating properly formatted in-text citations and reference lists for your assignments.
[Image https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Paperwork_-_by_Tom_Ventura.jpg, licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license.]
