Using an Evernote Template for Research

I have become increasingly interested in creating templates for Evernote. A template is useful for things you might come back to a lot, such as a basic project plan or for a process you use a lot. Recently, I created a “template” with a checklist of steps I want to remember to do everytime we want to publicize an event at the college.

One template I recently created is a template for doing (Quaker) research. I wanted to share this because you could create something similar for your own writing and research in your own field.

Background: This template is was created for an assignment I like to have my students do in class called a “biography as theology” paper.  In these papers, students are asked to write a biographical account that looks at how their person lived and what their living says about their believing (the idea is taken from James Wm. McClendon Jr.). This template lays out in pretty clearly the steps needed to develop a well-researched paper on their subject with all the links and necessary information to make it as easy as possible on the researcher later.

It occured to me after creating this, with a good bit of help from my Guilford College colleague and archivist Gwen Gosney Erickson, that this kind of template would be useful to me for my research as well. I can easily duplicate the note, put it into a new notebook created for my current research topic, and then plug in any specific sites and steps to fit the needs of the project. Not only do I not have to recreate the wheel, I a robust process already in place that can help me get started.

If you’re an Evernote user, feel free to click on the template link and click save to save it to your own Evernote library. If you’re not an Evernote user, what are you waiting for? After saving it, I’d encourage you to adapt it to your needs or create your own step by step template for your writing and research process.

Let me know if you have any questions or what you come up with in the comments below.