Hi

I'm about to start a PhD and am looking for a good book on organising reference material e.g. systems for categorising, filing, etc.

Any recommendations??

Cheers

Look up Endnote on google for organising references. A lot of us depend on it for referencing.

There's also bibtex if you use Latex.

I'd agree with Smilodon - look up google for EndNote help and use it religiously i.e. when you find a good document, reference it correctly and link the pdf file of the document to the relevant record (don't worry - it will make sense once you start using EndNote). There should be a course in your college to go thro' the basics in a few hours. Well worth the time.
Good luck with the research.

Thanks for all your suggestions. How about a system for your paper library. Any tips for that? I saw someone had suggested in a previous thread that a simple numerical system (linked to Endnotes?) is best since thematic categories are likely to evolve over the life of the PhD. Cheers

i have the same problem with my paper library.

i just sorted everything in alphabetical order (had it sorted thematically in chronological order before) and put it into folders. i use endnote and pop abstracts and keywords into that so i can search for certain topics. whenever i read something new i put the reference into endnote straightaway and on a heap of articles on my desk. when the heap gets large enough i sort it into my paper library. i also have pdfs of all the stuff i read (scanned) and keep them in a folder on my harddrive so i can send stuff to my sups.