Read & Reference Notebooks for students
Notetaking Series
Read & Reference, Research Notes notebook is available to buy on Amazon.
I’ve created this series because I wanted a study notebook that was:
1. Compact & Lightweight, to fit in a small backpack
2. Summarise or Paraphrase, for note-making in your own words
3. Descriptive Information, to connect to the full bibliographic reference
Bibliographic Information
Read & Reference Notebook - Header layout
I wanted a notebook that would prompt me to record bibliographic information alongside my notes.
The header of every page in the Read & Reference notebook has fields for bibliographic descriptions of the source you are making notes about. The headers are intended to give you enough reference information to cite the source when writing your assignment and quickly identify the source when you are creating the Reference List.
If you create the citations and reference list for your assignment at the end of the writing process this can make this stage one of the most tedious parts of the writing process. Tedium increases the risk of accidental plagiarism because you may rush, forget that a sentence is a quote or that it is a summary of another authors’ work.
Compact & Lightweight
I did a lot of travelling between Uni and work when I was a student so I needed tools that would allow me to study while on the move. I’ve found I will either read on my phone or listen to a narration on one of the apps like @Voice or Audible and I always have a paper notebook with me to summarise useful information.
Smaller than A4 and bigger than A5 the Read & Reference notebooks are designed to be compact, lightweight and keep backpack weight down.
Summarise or Paraphrase
The unusual size of Read & Reference is to discourage writing without thinking and encourage writing notes in your own words. Words that reflect your understanding of the work and that have direct meaning and impact on your research question.
When making notes I summarise or paraphrase the information I’ve read or listening and very occasionally write a direct quote in notebook. The process of writing down information helps me process and understand the detail in the article I’m reading or listening to.
Summary
Read & Reference notebooks are designed for university students who need a compact, lightweight notebook that they can use anywhere, anytime. Every page has headline bibliographic information to prompt students to correctly capture the author, title, and page numbers of each source and when it comes to writing assignments this is key information that will be required for in-line citations.
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University Librarian provides a blog, notebooks and tools for students who want to improve their study skills.
