How to Organize Web Research With Google Notebook

It can be very frustrating when you're doing web research to have to keep cutting and pasting information from your browser to your text editor. Not to mention, doing this means keeping yet another window and program open on your already cluttered desktop. An easier way to organize your web research is to use Google Notebook to keep track of those clipping and web addresses. It works in your browser window and you can even share the information with collaborators.

Things You'll Need

• Google account
• Google Notebook web extension

Instructions

1. Login to your existing Google account or create an account if you don't already have one. Go to More, then Even More from the top of your browser, and locate Google Notebook. Download the extension, restart your browser and click on the new Notebook icon to open your Notebook.

2. Open a full page version of your Notebook. Initially the page will be half-sized, but in order to really organize research it's much easier to have a whole page to work with. Click on "Open in Full Page" or use the pop-out arrow to enlarge the page.

3. Add images or links to your Notebook as you're conducting web research. Simply right-click on the information you want to save and select "Note this" from the pop-up menu. If you want to save a portion of text, highlight it and use the Clip button on your Notebook. It has a yellow star right next to it, making it very easy to locate.

4. Annotate your information by adding your own comments. Click on the speech bubble icon under any note or clipping to enter your own thoughts about what you've clipped.

5. Organize your web research into sections. Click on New Note, then Add Section. A Section Header box will appear into which you can enter the title for your section. Once you have sections created, all you have to do is drag your notes, clippings, links and images underneath the correct section to organize them.

6. Name notebooks for different projects. You can have a number of notebooks in your account and can name them to make it easier to manage. To name one, click on the Tools drop-down and choose "Rename." You can also delete a notebook from this menu.

7. Share your notebooks with collaborators. Click on the "Sharing Options" link a the top of the page and either Invite Collaborators or Create a Public Webpage. Sending invitations allows you to share with specific people via their email address, while creating a webpage will make the notebook available in Google search results and give it its own URL.

Tips & Warnings

• You can unpublish a notebook at any time if you don't want it to be public anymore. Just go back to the Sharing Options menu and change the settings.

• Your Google Notebook is portable. It's tied to your Google account, not your computer, so you can sign on and access it from any Internet-connected machine.

Resources

• Download the Google Notebook extension