I’m still in search of a “perfect” academic note-taking system, but I’ve gone from taking notes by hand to typing on Pages and annotating PDFs using GoodNotes and Preview on Mac. I used to rely heavily on papers and pens, but I shortly abandoned it after realizing that writing by hand is too slow for taking notes in a seminar. I still carry a notebook; sometimes, writing in a notebook is very useful. But it’s always the attempt to find stuff later—flipping through hundreds of pages of illegible handwriting—that is dreadful and frustrating. So, I’ve turned to digital note-taking, which allows me to search my notes, whether I’m writing, typing, or marking up a PDF.

I use Pages, which automatically saves as I work, for taking in-the-moment notes in a seminar and noting my questions/responses/thoughts on class readings — all in one place. In my individual reading, I switch between using Preview and GoodNotes on an iPad or as they allow me to annotate PDFs easily. Since CUNY provides Microsoft Office 365 for us, I also tried using OneNotes. However, having multiple CUNY email addresses due to various campus affiliations had caused me to misplace my notes. Trying to sign in to each account and dealing with the two-step verification to look for my notes was time-consuming and didn’t always work. My files won’t sync across devices sometimes, which is something, as of yet, I haven’t experienced with using iCloud. In this sense, I can control where to store and how to arrange my notes and sources — yet within the limits of the platforms and assumptions that these technological tools will continue to function properly, which is an aspect I don’t necessarily have control of. Regarding technical bugs, I used Zotero to organize and manage sources and citations in the past. However, I didn’t have much success with it. It kept crashing, and some of my latest annotations would go missing after my device was updated to the latest IOS version. I ended up creating different folders (either on my desktop or on Google Drive) and storing all my PDFs there. I copy and paste citations on a Word Doc to keep track of citations. I’m aware that this might not be the most effective approach to maintaining a personal notes database in the long run as I discover and accumulate more sources, so I’m also willing to give Zotero another try.

In terms of finding scholarly articles and sources for research, I often look at the bibliography from any class readings that I find particularly useful to see who the author is citing. If I find an interesting text, I’ll also look at the bibliography of that piece, continuing this process in hopes of mapping out the scholarly conversations the authors are engaged in. I mainly use the databases of our library, which select and filter sources indexed by specialists and indicate how I can access a particular text. I will also use Google Scholar, which is quite effective in finding precise quotes and phrases. However, I’m always curious (perhaps also a little skeptical) about Google Scholar’s ranking algorithms and scope. It doesn’t offer a collection of carefully selected sources as our library systems do, so I’m always curious about the list of databases it covers. I’m interested in continuing to explore, think, and complicate questions surrounding my personal knowledge infrastructure, particularly the conditions that enable its becoming — as a way to foster infrastructural awareness and “intelligibility,” as Lisa Parks puts it, to become more aware of how I participate in and am complicit with knowledge production processes.

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