Manual card files

The idea behind a card file is to establish a set of individual cards, each of which will represent a document or physical piece of information. These include the full citation, as well as any notes and annotations you make. One common arrangement of these cards is alphabetic, by the author's surname. Others allocate a running number to each citation, and use this as their point of access. You must decide which is the most appropriate method for your own purposes.

Other details that can be noted on the cards are relevant keywords or subject headings, quotes or notes pertaining to the reference, abstracts or summaries, and a call number (if appropriate). Some people also add keywords or subject headings cards to assist locating citations at a later date. These 'guide cards' can be colour coded.

You will be required to use a particular referencing style in the presentation of a paper or thesis, so ensure that your cards contain all the information possibly needed for the particular referencing style required. Examples of these include the author's full names (rather than just initials) or the issue number as well as volume number of a journal.

Can you visualise how you could structure a manual card file around your 'hooks'? Could you use subject headings or colour-coded groups of cards or ...?

After discussions with various academics, researchers and librarians, we have listed some of the advantages and disadvantages associated with manual card files

If you have used card files, do these reflect some of your experiences?

Diane Goldsworthy (Lecturer in Nursing) outlines how she uses a card indexing system.

View one of her cards - front of card + back of card + legend

Margie Wallin (Health Science Liaison Librarian) describes how the card file system doesn't work for her

Click on the icons above to hear the audio file, or read a transcript of the comments.