If you are planning a life of scholarship, C. Wright Mills suggestions in the appendix, “On Intellectual Craftsmanship,” in The Sociological Imagination (Oxford University Press) are very helpful. (Lets agree to overlook Mills’ exclusive use of the male pronoun — he wrote in the 50's.)

He offers two sorts of advice in his article on intellectual crafts:

1.                 How to organize your files

2.                 How to organize your thinking processes

In the case of files we need to think of things quite differently because of the computer. We will all have the same kind of paper files in file cabinets and in our bookshelves, but the procedures for keeping our hard drives are new and emerging. Here are a few suggestions:

1.                  Everyone needs a bibliography file like “Endnote” to keep a life list or lists of references. Will enable you to enter a reference once and always have it in complete form when you need it

2.                  You need a way to keep and use both qualitative and quantitative data sets: spread sheets and data bases keep quantitative data and analysis programs like SPSS and SAS enable you to manipulate the data. Qualitative data analysis packages like Nud*st and Ethnograph let you maintain files of interview data.

3.                  Mills suggests keeping a Journal, but now it should be on disk. Ditto for your reading notes. You will also keep e-mail files and other sorts of correspondence, web documents, web sites, etc. that you might want to be able access. At some point it will make sense to index or code these files to make it easier to find stuff.  This can be done with word programs or with standalone programs like Xyindex or Ethnograph.

4.                  It is easier to keep your computer organized than your paper files and you need to build systems to integrate these two — tickler files, brainstorm lists, hypertext type links

5.                  Any system begins to break down and you will need to do what Mills recommended in terms of cleaning out and reorganizing files on an ongoing basis.

6.                  One issue we have that Mills did not, is that the programs and operating systems necessary to access our files and documents become obsolete. You need to either continually update your programs and systems and then update the files (sometimes and expensive proposition) or when you archive files and data that you hope to have access to in the future you need to archive the programs. Otherwise you’ll find that there is no way to read the files. This doesn’t happen with print.

7.                  Disks fail and computers are stolen. Once your entire scholarly life is on disk it is also essential that you make back-ups. You should have two that are rotated and one should be kept off site.  Don’t store magnetic media in steel file cabinets.

Organizing your thinking processes (not made obsolete by technology):

1.                  “You cannot ‘keep your hand in’ if you do not write something at least every week.” — moreover, if you write all the time, then producing a paper or a book becomes an editing job that is much facilitated by the computers. You should not be in the position of facing a blank screen. “... books are simply organized releases from the continuous work that goes into them...” 

2.                  “You will have to acquire the habit of taking a large volume of notes from any worth-while book you read — although... you may get better work out of yourself when you read really bad books.” Well not bad books per se but books that you disagree with.

3.                  “...surrounding oneself by a circle of people who will listen and talk — and at times they have to be imaginary characters — is (one of the full social conditions of the best intellectual workmanship)” Imaginary means may mean having dialogs with dead scholars. We can also have social correspondence with a national and international community of scholars -- the internet and e-mail facilitate that process.

4.                  3 sorts of Reading notes (p.202)

a) systematically restating what the man says on given points or as a whole,

b) some you accept or refute giving reasons and arguments

c) others you use as a source of suggestions for your own elaborations and projects.

5.                  Do not do empirical work if you can possibly avoid it ... it is a lot of trouble — “The purpose of empirical inquiry is to settle disagreements and doubts about facts and thus to make arguments more fruitful by basing all sides more substantively.” — excellent advice, especially for grad students who “have to” do empirical research for external reasons. (p. 205)

6.                  “The sociological imagination ... consists of the capacity to switch from one perspective to another, and in the process to build up an adequate view of a total society and of its components.” (p. 211ff)

    1.                  Rearrange the files to invite imagination — serendipity, juxtaposition, analysis, taxonomy,