My Research Notes

The starting point of any research would be the collection, classification and arrangement of the material. The researcher needs to take down notes from the materials surveyed and then adopt a method to classify and arrange them. The scientific method is the index card system. Usually a scholar would be required to keep a good stock of cards. Cards are helpful for arrangement and preservation, although they are expensive. They are easy to shift and rearrange according to any scheme, chronological, geographical, biographical or topical. The procedure would be the same as adopted in a library where there are as many cards as the books in the shelves. The scholar would have as may cards as there are relevant ideas to put down on cards. Each single idea is treated as a single unit, as if a separate book, and is never clubbed with another idea. A single document may hold several ideas, each of which is put down on a separate card.

The mobile app developed by the undersigned specifically for the purpose of aiding the researchers in their preliminary operations of material collection in the form of notes and photographs, its arrangement and organization as well as seamless transfer in electronic form to MS-Word (Open Document Format).

Making Notes:

The mobile app, MyResearchNotes, presents the scholar with some definite and rigid procedure in taking down notes as on the index cards except that the index card is now electronic and it is on the smartphone. The procedure is fixed, the same details needs to be filled upon every card without fail. Every card contains:

1) A heading to the information furnished in the card

2) A precise indication of the date of the document - in case the exact date is not known at least the approximate date, or month, or year

3) The page or folio number of the document from which the information is collected.

4) At the bottom of the card the fullest reference about the document including the name of the author, the title of the work, the number of the volume, the number of the page and the year of publication.

Saved notes can be edited at a later date. Swiping left or right allows one to navigate to the previous or next note.

In addition to the textual content photographic content can also be added to a note. Photographs can be taken when necessary from the mobile app itself. Any number of photographs can be attached to a single note.

Classifying and Arranging:

Four generic types of classifications are possible namely chronological, geographical, topical or biographical depending on date, place, species or form. In addition any number of user defined classification tags can be appended to the note allowing for unlimited ways of sorting and arranging the notes.

List of notes comes up at beginning. The title of the note is followed by sorting tags defined by the user. Tapping on the tags will sort the list according to the tag selected. The filtering and sorting options are available to filter by tags given by the user, or by the author of the source document, or by the year of publication.

The notes saved on the mobile phone can be exported to MS-Word (Open Document Format). A file containing all the notes as on date will be saved in the Open Document Format (.docx) which can be opened in MS-Word or any other popular word processing system. There is also the option to save the file onto Google drive. Importing from SD card or the internal storage option is available for use in case of application re-installation or upgrade and when the data needs to be restored.

Conclusion

The mobile app MyResearchNotes greatly enhances the productivity of the researcher. It helps to organize material in a scientific way.The mobile app will work even when there is no phone (Network) connectivity as in case of remote excavation locations or basement archives, making it an invaluable tool in streamlining the preliminary operations for undertaking research.

Gautam Hegde

Bangalore, India