Analog note-taking when highlighting is not possible (e.g. books)

Anybody who follows me on Twitter or reads my blog knows that I have quite a healthy stock of stationery. I have always loved stationery and office supplies. I love taking notes by hand, and this reflects in my methods for note-taking, active reading and writing.

Recently, a relatively new follower of my blog and Twitter stream asked me a question (I am paraphrasing here):

How do you take notes when you cannot highlight?

I am assuming that people who ask me this are referring to note-taking of books. Personally, I don’t mark up my books, and obviously I am extremely careful with those from the library, so I interpreted this student’s question in this way.

In this blog post, I explain my method, integrating my Twitter thread with some additional thoughts.

THREAD: A student (new to my methods) asked me what I did when I could not highlight.

Most people know I don’t mark my own books (nor the library’s!) but you can do with yours whatever you want.

Since I don’t mark my books, the highlighting and annotating methods I use … pic.twitter.com/l2OGV9RDF7

— Dr Raul Pacheco-Vega (@raulpacheco) November 28, 2020

… may or may not work in the same way.

Since I prefer analog systems and do not mark books up, here are a few ways in which I take notes that still retain some of the characteristics of my strategies for printed materials.

1. THE INDEX CARD METHOD.

For example, this index card shows notes I took from @STRomanoPhD ‘s book, Transforming Rural Water Governance”.

(Those who follow my Twitter feed assiduously may remember that I also took notes of her book in my Everything Notebook, but that’s my next tweet) pic.twitter.com/A8Wt4HoITn

— Dr Raul Pacheco-Vega (@raulpacheco) November 28, 2020

2. THE EVERYTHING NOTEBOOK METHOD

This would be my normal setup for taking notes off a book/book chapter.

I can write notes that are direct quotations or my own thoughts or I can paraphrase.

Obviously direct quotes have quotation marks and the exact page to avoid any chance of accidental misattribution. pic.twitter.com/2nW6K6MWoc

— Dr Raul Pacheco-Vega (@raulpacheco) November 28, 2020

3. THE CORNELL NOTES METHOD.

3) THE CORNELL NOTES APPROACH:

I normally don’t use Cornell Notes to take notes of classes because I’m a professor and I haven’t taken courses since I was a graduate student (I do take pedagogy and tech ones obviously)

Anyhow, with books and chapters I also use Cornell Notes pic.twitter.com/XeKvueayhh

— Dr Raul Pacheco-Vega (@raulpacheco) November 29, 2020

Obviously, as you can imagine, I’ve written a lot about Note-Taking Techniques on my website’s Resources page. I list those below.

In my Note-Taking Techniques page, I have blog posts that point to each of the three methods I described before. https://t.co/lKZe0IgfGQ

1) INDEX CARDS: https://t.co/RppZJmbPiz

2) EVERYTHING NOTEBOOKhttps://t.co/FPW14RlaHp

3) CORNELL NOTEShttps://t.co/X7TtvRdYzt

— Dr Raul Pacheco-Vega (@raulpacheco) November 29, 2020

Obvious question you surely will have:

When should I write in my Everything Notebook or when should I use Cornell Notes, or when is a good time to use Index Cards?

Every single student of mine and every person who has ever attended my workshops asks me this question. I don’t have a universal answer, although I do have a few suggestions. As it always happens with techniques and methods for note-taking, active reading, annotating, writing, etc., we all develop our own heuristics for when we should use one method over the other.

Here are my heuristics:

1. If what I am reading cannot be marked up (I don’t write nor highlight my books, nor any library’s books), I use physical (analog) media. You can, easily, take notes in other programs (Evernote, Notion, etc.) Personally, I find that I need the tactile sensation of handwriting.
2. I usually write summaries and quotations drawn from books and book chapters in my Everything Notebook if they’re directly related to a research project I am doing at the moment, or if I am doing something VERY specific with them (for example, write a book review).

3) I frequently use Index Cards when summarizing and paraphrasing. It’s rare (though it does happen) that I use Index Cards to copy quotations.

4) For direct quotations I almost always use a modified version of the Cornell Notes developed by @katrinafee https://t.co/2s42MORNWr

— Dr Raul Pacheco-Vega (@raulpacheco) November 29, 2020

Now, let’s go to another question I often get asked:

Do you take notes in your Everything Notebook, or on Index Cards or Cornell Notes of ARTICLES that you actually highlighted and scribbled on? Glad you asked.

The answer is YES, I DO. Why do I do this? (apparently redundantly)

For example on the left you will see a Cornell Note of Sarah Romano’s recent book.

On the right, my Cornell Note of a recent paper by @thomasnhale pic.twitter.com/zhx4Z43QpR

— Dr Raul Pacheco-Vega (@raulpacheco) November 29, 2020

“If you already have the printed article or book chapter and you highlighted it, why not just drop your notes into an #ExcelDump row?”

First, because redundancies help me learn better.

Second, I DO create a CSED row, but I also write Index Cards from where I draw my notes. pic.twitter.com/Qg3TisBOhy

— Dr Raul Pacheco-Vega (@raulpacheco) November 29, 2020

My methods work for me, adaptations of my methods work for my students and research assistants and colleagues and also for thousands of people around the globe, but the only person who can really tell if a technique I suggest will work for you is YOU.

Hopefully this blog post can answer people’s questions!

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