Deliberately called note making and not note taking, this is the active process of recording information from one source to make it useful for another purpose. This is a skill that will definitely improve with time. You will learn how to keep up in lectures and supervisions and take notes from books but it may be tough to begin with.

You will probably find that you make more notes at university than you are used to. When you are learning how do this effectively it is very easy to write too much, possibly because you are worried about missing something. The process then becomes time-consuming and arduous, we don't always capture the right things, it can distract us from what is actually happening, and can generate additional work in organisation and reviewing notes to make them useful.

This page will look at what makes good notes and suggest some techniques you could try for the first time or fine tune, if you are using them already.

Remember that different styles suit different people and that different styles suit different purposes. You do not have to focus on one technique; use them in conjunction e.g. take linear notes in lectures or when first reading a book and then summarise using the Cornell or pattern method.

First it is important to question why and when we take notes, to realise that there are different purposes, that require different techniques and approaches. Click on the boxes to find out more. 

• Ease of use in a particular environment - will you always have your notebook with you? Can you balance your laptop on your knee? If using audio notes, are you able to make them without disturbing others?
• Accessibility - can your read what you have written?
• Review - can you edit them easily and add to them if need be?
• Organisation and retrieval - are you able to find what you need from your notes quickly and effectively?
• Back up - what happens if you lose or delete the original? If you take notes on paper, remember to regularly scan or photograph them.

Here are some digital tools that may help you if you want to make notes on a computer. They have the benefit of being accessible wherever you are, on multiple devices, and they will help you organise them too. By storing them in a single tool, they are more easily searchable than if you have multiple Word documents. If you want to stick with Word, why not attach the document to a bibliographic reference in Zotero or Mendeley to help you find them more easily.

• ​Evernote  and Onenote are very similar and are good for mulitple notes stored in digital 'notebooks'. They are well organised and searchable. The to-do list function is also useful for helping with time management.
• Googlekeep - like post it notes on your desktop and phone. Takes audio notes too.
• Reference management software e.g. Zotero or Mendeley, allows you to store notes alongside references or to attach documents of notes. To find out more about reference management software, see our page on Tools in the How do I reference and avoid plagiarism section?