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Rural Electrification On-line Lesson Home Page

Organizing Your Research
Annotated Note Cards


A good organizational scheme is very important during the research phase of your History Day project. Sound organization of your research will save you time, assist you in developing and refining your project's outline, and point out connections between themes and ideas you might otherwise miss. Many scholars use note cards to keep track of their sources (bibliography cards) and their notes (note cards) while conducting research for their projects. Review the example note cards below and click on the Friendly Notepad to the right to find out how to "build" bibliography entries and note cards. Friendly Notepad
Note card; Edison's inventions/social impact; Edison Phonograph Company. Publicity Photograph, Image of four women listening to a phonograph; images illustrates how Edison's inventions, in this case a phonograph, impacted American society. Items like the phonograph gave people more reasons to want electricity in their homes.
Note card: Edison Inventions/social impact; Clark, Edison the Man Who Made the Future, 7. Concise account of the impact Edison's invention had on American and European society. Includes a nice statement explaining that Edison helped make available the technology of the contemporary world. Edison's inventions made electricity more desirable for rural Minnesota farmers.
Note card: Edison's Inventions/Social Impact; secondary; Israel, A Life of Invention, 167. Israel calls the electric light the greatest invention from the world's greatest inventor. Isreal argues that Edison created the first institutions of organized corporate research. This process of inventing yielded numerous inventions that made electricity more useful for all Americans.
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