When I began my master’s degree part-time 9 years ago, I switched my reading/notetaking strategy online. At that time, I was motivated by the freedom to write my thesis while travelling, a dream that was interrupted by Covid-19 closures, regardless is has been a time and working memory saver for which I am forever grateful. I use Microsoft OneNote: I screen print articles onto a page, using my tablet to take handwritten notes directly on the articles.

I divide article sections into themes and include a summary page, with citations and a short summary for each article. Using the search function, I can search for phrases and key words in my summaries, in the body of the article, and also in my handwritten notes.

When I began my PhD 4 years ago, I made the move to an electronic citation manager. I can quickly and easily import citations directly from the library search page, after a quick edit they stay (mostly) reliably formatted. I can connect Microsoft Word directly to the citation manager and it creates intext citations and formats my bibliography. It’s not perfect, and I still must do my own edits, but the time saving can be measured in days.

Both systems have a learning curve; in both cases I spent about a week just learning the functionality of the apps before I could efficiently use them. There was a fair bit of YouTube University involved, and some frustration along the way. Was it worth it? Yes!!!!