Note taking is the heart of research. Taking quality notes not only saves you time so you don't have to read the source again and again, but it will also make writing your first draft a lot easier. In the old days, notes are written on index cards. A note card contained bibliographic information such as author name, year published, and relevant page numbers, plus the note itself. It was recommended to write one item per note so note cards could be shuffled and re-arranged in the organizational stage to help you develop an outline. In the age of computers, researchers usually save notes in a word processor file. People either save all their notes in a single file or save each note in a separate file. Both approaches require a lot of copying and pasting when you need to use your notes. The notes are separated from bibliographic records, so it also takes time to find your notes when you work on certain source material. The advantage of using Biblioscape to take notes is the tight integration between your notes and the corresponding bibliographic record.
In the reference editor, if you have the full text of the source in PDF or HTML, you can view the full text on the left panel and take notes on the right panel. All the notes taken about the source will be listed on the right.
Taking notes in Biblioscape also has other advantages. You can categorize your notes easily with drag and drop. Retrieving categorized notes is easy by clicking a category item on the right. If you have access to the composition module, you can organize your notes into an outline by using drag and drop. If you prefer using a word processor, you can shoot saved notes into your word processor along with related temporary citations. Once finished, Biblioscape can convert the temporary citations into formatted citations and generate a bibliography.