Research and Writing: Keeping Track of Sources
Tackling a book project entailing massive research is a daunting task. Yet it sometimes yields best-selling books. Just look at David McCullough’s 1776, Stephen Ambrose’s Undaunted Courage and Nathaniel Philbrick’s Mayflower and In the Heart of the Sea, all New York Times best-sellers in recent years, all pulling together an amazing amount of data that is carefully documented.
Keeping track of sources can be a nightmare. Citing them properly can be a pain.
Naturally, software developers have come up with solutions. Some are simple bibliographic databases, others hook into popular word processors. Still others offer tightly integrated suites of word processer, note taker, and bibliography manager, with modules that search out useful references via the internet.
A good, but somewhat outdated overview of these software packages is available at an open-source wiki. If you need this kind of organizational support, this site is a good starting place to track down what you need.
Over the coming year, we’ll look at many of these packages ourselves to try to make it easier to solve this writer’s problem.
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