"The Curious Researcher 3"

Chapter three of "The Curious Researcher" is a great aid to research.  It continues in a more focused way, Chapter two's topic of researching one's topic.  It really focuses on not only note taking but quoting and finding things easily.

It can be a difficult thing to take effective notes while reading through a source.  Naturally, I want to just write down exactly what is written, no thought needed there.  Ballenger expresses the danger of this.  If we just write down whatever was written, we're not really understanding what we've read.  To understand things, we must work through them in our minds (or on our paper) so when we write a rough draft, we aren't later lost in our own research notes.

This strategy of pondering with notes helped me get straight A's during Chemistry and Physics in high school, so I am more than happy to take notes when reading.  Not only did it help me get good grades, but now I can simply review my notes and remember much of what I learned.  This, I think, is the key to researching properly: to understand, not just to memorize.  Something Bartholomae wrote about in "Ways of Reading."

Another great reason to take "pondering notes" is it can help prevent plagiarism, a very easy crime to commit.

Finding proper sources at the library and on the internet can be difficult.  Sometimes, when a topic is too specific, the sources become too scarce.  Ballenger addresses this in his last section.  The librarian Terry who spoke on Friday was an amazing help with library research.  She opened my eyes to the many tricks we can use to find our sources.  Ballenger says that just broadening the topic a little may mean the difference of finding useful reference material.

I will certainly use these strategies in the future.