A. Taking Notes from Books and Articles

What you want to extract from your sources is facts not words. I suggest you use 3x5 paper or a computer database. The goal is to make one note per fact: a name, a date, a statistic, an idea, but NOT a full sentence. That way, you will avoid copying, paraphrasing, and plagiarizing.

Exception: If, in your research, you run across a sentence or a brief paragraph that is either exceptionally lovely ("To be or not to be, that is the question") or somebody else’s opinion (As Hitler said: "Deutschland ueber alles"), then—and only then–is it permissible to copy. If you do, make sure you quote exactly, word for word. And keep each copied sentence or paragraph on a separate piece of paper (or field).

At the top of each piece of paper, note the source, such as the author’s last name and the page number, so you can later document where you found it.

B. Taking Notes from Live Sources and Documents

Live sources and personal documents must be treated differently from secondary sources such as books and articles.

Interviews are a supplement to, not a substitute for library research. Do some library research before you go out to interview someone. Find out what you can about the situation you are going to ask him or her about, so you don’t waste time with irrelevant or ignorant questions ("What year was Pearl Harbor bombed?"). Always go prepared.

If you interview someone, ask whether you can tape-record the interview and then transcribe it. You can then use the transcript as your source. You can quote your interviewee in the body of your paper, or attach excerpts from transcript of the interview to the back of your paper as an appendix.

If you’ve interviewed several people, you can draw some generalizations from the interviews ("Seven out of the ten people interviewed agreed that....").

If you use documents such as personal letters as your source, it is also all right to quote from them at length. If you wish, attach copies of the documents to your paper.

C. Taking Notes from Internet Sources

If you find a Web site that looks both interesting and reliable, you should print out the pages that contain information relevant to your research. Internet sources often disappear quickly, and you may not find again the information you once saw.

But remember to take down the complete information about the Web site. Be sure to establish that the Web site you are looking at is reliable. And even if you have print-outs in front of you, be sure to take notes on 3x5 paper or on a database, just as you would with a book, and for the same reason: you want data, not words.

If you quote from an Internet source (as from a document or an interviewee), you must make it clear that you are quoting, either by putting the excerpt you are copying in "quotation marks," or by indenting the quotation in a separate paragraph.

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