Here are two pointers for your Major Spreadsheet:įirst, start early and add often. I therefore add anything related to my work: books, policies, blog posts. I initially was only adding journal articles, but realized this would work better if it truly housed all my resources. What you want to do is add a bunch of column headings for things you want to keep track of and then start adding resources to each row. I started a similar spreadsheet very early in my program. I call her approach the Major Spreadsheet, because she is mapping out a very large body of literature for her doctorate in a single spreadsheet. In her post called “ How I Use Excel to Manage My Literature Review,” Elaine Campbell outlines her approach to using a spreadsheet to manage literature. The best part about my system: it doesn’t require buying any software and it doesn’t take hours to learn! Instead, I use a simple spreadsheet (Excel and/or Google Sheets) and a numbering format to keep track of all my resources. I’ve tried them all and none of have stuck. It’s not that there is anything wrong with them I know folks who swear by them.

There are many different types of reference managers, including Refworks, Zotero, Endnote, and Mendeley. You can follow her on Twitter where she tweets about graduate education, mental health, and disability.

candidate in Higher Education at the University of Toronto.