Suppose you’ve been given a research assignment. You do your research—looking online, visiting your local library, interviewing experts—but how do you organize everything for easy reference?
A simple research database spreadsheet does the trick nicely.
You can create such a spreadsheet easily using either as Microsoft Excel, or a table with a word processing program.
A research spreadsheet can include any or all of these items:
- Author name
- Title of article or book
- Bibliographic information
- Hyperlink to the article
- Keywords
- Notes
You can change, add, or remove elements as you see necessary. For example, on my research spreadsheets, when I list an article title, I also include the publication title. (“Frank Sinatra Has a Cold,” in Esquire magazine.) Also, I’ve added a list item number for my first column as a way of tracking how many listings I have for a given research project.
Using these items, a spreadsheet would look like this:
| Number | Author Name | Article/Book Title | Bibliographic Info | Hyperlink | Keywords | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Talese, Gay | “Frank Sinatra Has a Cold” (article) | Esquire magazine, April 1966 | — | Frank Sinatra; New Journalism | One of Talese’s best-known articles. |
| 2 | Talese, Gay | Unto the Sons (book) | New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1992 | — | — | Memoir about Talese’s life. |
Why would you want to use a spreadsheet for all of your reference materials?
- You can put everything into one place.
- You can easily organize and maintain your listings.
- You can incorporate hyperlinks to all the online resources.
- You can share your spreadsheet with friends and colleagues as needed.
- You can save money on printing costs; the hyperlinks enable you to access the articles when you need.
The next time you have a research project, create a database spreadsheet for yourself and see how it can help you accomplish your goals.
