What do do with the notes?

Amster, you raise the exact problem that I've been thinking about. So far, my method has been to write note in a spiral notebook and then use those notes for writing up actual text. The notes have included quotations as well as my responses to articles. For a lot of the articles/chapters, I've been writing immediate responses (usually half a page to two pages) in the spiral notebook. I think that system might work best for me since it's easy for me to always have my spiral notebook and a pen. Not always as easy for me to have the computer with me--even though it's a laptop. Plus, I prefer to read without hearing the hum of the computer. And if the computer is on, I will waste time checking to see the latest Palin/Obama/Biden/McCain snafu. Or I'll blog. My notebook system served me very well for the short section (only about 5000 words) I did in June.

However, I did initially plan on using EndNote, a program that allows you to enter all of your sources so that in-text footnotes (or endnotes) and Works Cited are subsequently a piece of cake. And, apparently, you can ask it to take a document in MLA style and automatically switch it to some other style. That could be a great time/headache saver. However, I downloaded a trial program, and after spending over a couple of hours over a couple of days trying to make it work, I gave up so I could focus on meeting my writing deadline for my supervisor. Have any of you worked with EndNote?

Like you, I don't have easy access to resources. Not only am I not near a library where I can check out sources for semesters at a time, I'm 2-3 hours from a decent research library. However, interlibrary loan allows me to keep books for 3-6 weeks at a time, and the UC libraries are part of my colleges loan system. But since it's not longer, the post-it thing doesn't really work for me (as it did in the MA program). So, I like the spiral notebooks because they are unified and low-tech, but I do need to figure out a plan for organizing/storing all of the articles I've copied and for storing bibliographic data. Maybe I'll give EndNote another try or check out BookEnds?