I am trying to find an effective and efficient way to take notes and summarize the journal articles for my candidacy’s literature review.  It’s a fine balance between too much and too little.  Too much information equates to lots of time needed and difficulty synthesizing.  On the other hand, too little information means that although the research didn’t take much time, later recalling details becomes more difficult.

So, I will be using some online resources to help in the note-taking and summarizing part of reading articles. It will be like an annotated bibliography with specific content necessary for a literature review.  Here are some websites I will be using:

Asking Questions is Critical to Taking Notes: http://www.lib.unimelb.edu.au/postgrad/litreview/criticalreading.html

Look at #3 and #4:  http://www.une.edu.au/tlc/students/factsheets/literature-review.pdf 

Great section on Summarizing & Note-Taking: http://fie.engrng.pitt.edu/fie98/papers/1298.pdf 

Critically Analyzing Information Sources:  http://www.library.cornell.edu/olinuris/ref/research/skill26.htm 

How to Prepare an Annotated Bibliography:  http://www.library.cornell.edu/olinuris/ref/research/skill28.htm

How to Write Annotated Bibliographies (Descriptive/Critical):  http://www.library.mun.ca/guides/howto/annotated_bibl.php#how

Later, I may use this to organize my Literature Review:  http://www.lc.unsw.edu.au/onlib/pdf/Litrev.pdf 

So, should I use sticky notes or a computer-generated form to take these notes?