SOCI 1101H: Introduction to Sociology Honors (Robinson)

Create a document that includes:

• important keywords you want to search for
• where you searched -- databases, search engines, library catalogs)
• what you searched for -- search strings, i.e. "academic achievement" AND (poverty OR "low socioeconomic status")
• when you searched 

When it comes to organizing your documents, keep it simple. 

• Make sure to rename downloaded articles, book chapters, etc. using the first author's last name and a short title (lastname_shorttitle.pdf).
• Keep them in the same folder on your computer or citation manager. 

Example

If I downloaded this article,

Older, C. E., Diesel, A., Patterson, A. P., Meason-Smith, C., Johnson, T. J., Mansell, J., & ... Rodrigues Hoffmann, A. (2017). The feline skin microbiota: The bacteria inhabiting the skin of healthy and allergic cats. Plos ONE, 12(6), 1-18. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0178555

I would rename it older_felineskinmicrobiota.pdf.

Considering using a table to organize your study summaries and create a synthesis matrix. A synthesis matrix lets you track themes across multiple sources.

Alternately, you can create custom fields in your citation manager of choice to keep track of this information. Request a training session with a librarian to learn more about doing this.