As you begin your research project take a moment and think about how to keep careful records of where you have searched (e.g. Google or a library database) and with what keywords. This is important because the way you think about your project may change as you learn more about it and you need room to adapt. What you want to avoid is repeating work (since you may not remember doing a search or how you did it days or even hours later) or leaving a hole in your research (e.g., by missing an important database or failing to figure out terms that produce better results).
You also need good recordkeeping from the start in order to keep track of your citations. Keeping track of your sources (and citing them properly) is an essential part of academic research. Citations help you avoid plagiarism and demonstrate to your professor and the academic community all of the work that you did to find credible sources.
You can track your work by keeping a journal of your work and maintaining a list of all the sources you consulted or by using an online citation manager.
Citation managers are designed to help you keep track of information you find while researching. They allow you to organize and retrieve the citations for books, articles, and Web sites that you have found, and can be linked directly to library databases so you do not have to re-search for the material. The citation manager then works with your word processing software to insert in-text citations into your paper and create a bibliography. Examples of citation managers are EndNote and Zotero. To learn more, go to the Citations Managers guide.