Black Studies Research—A Guide from the Library: NoodleTools

After you set up your NoodleTools account, the first thing you should do is create a PROJECT for your paper. On the NoodleTools Projects screen (where NoodleTools will open):

• Click "new project" at the top left
• Give your project a name (a few words that describe your paper topic)
• For Citation Style, choose "Chicago/Turablan"
• For Level, choose "Advanced"
• All of these choices can be changed or revised later

CLICK HERE to watch a 1-minute wordless video demonstrating how to create a project, and how the Projects Screen relates to the other NoodleTools screens.

Click on the project you've created for your paper. This takes you to your project's Dashboard. There you can add details about your paper and share it with your teachers if they have sharing set up. (Also, note that across the top there are tabs for "Sources," "Notecards," and "Paper." More on those in other boxes.)

• CLICK HERE for instructions and info about using the Dashboard.

MAKING NOTECARDS
Once you've set up and opened your project you can make notecards through the Sources screen or through the Notes screen.

• If you make a notecard through the Sources screen, it must be associated with a particular source from your sources list.
• If you make a notecard through the Notecards screen, it does not have to be associated with a source (it can just be a thought of your own or a reminder, etc.), but you can associate your notecard with a source if you want to.

CLICK HERE for instructions on creating notecards from the Sources and the Notecards screens, along with tips about what to put on your notecards.

LABELING NOTECARDS
NoodleTools lets you label notecards with Tags, Colors, and Visual Cues.

• Tags help you identify concepts and ideas in your notecards. You can create tags for certain date ranges, individual people, locations, etc. You can have multiple tags on any single notecard. Find notecards with particular tags by searching for them.
• Colors make notecards immediately visible. A notecard can have only one color. Use color in your notecards to indicate different sides of an argument, organize subsections within your topic, indicate that a notecard comes from a particular source, etc.
• Visual Cues let you label your cards with a choice of six visual reminders, including "need further research" and "important."
  CLICK HERE for instructions on using Tags, Colors, and Visual Cues.

As soon as you find a source for your paper (a book, an article, a map, etc.), add it to your NoodleTools project. This way you won't forget where your info comes from. With these sources, NoodleTools will spew out a properly-formatted bibliography for your paper. Also, when you make NoodleTools notecards you'll be able to associate notes with sources you've added. Here are three ways to add sources:

1. Add a Source Manually
Fill in a form with info about your source and NoodleTools will create a properly-formatted citation.

• On the Dashboard for your project, click the "Sources" tab the top.
• Click the green "New Source" tab at the top left.
• You will be prompted to select where the source is and what type it is and to fill in information about your source, then choose save.
• If your source is a book, you can select print-in-hand, then book, and fill in the title or ISBN. If NoodleTools finds the book, the fields will populate for you automatically. Choose save.
• CLICK HERE for more detailed instructions (with screen shots) on how to add a source manually.

2. Import a Source Reference Directly from a Database
Some of the databases that Saint Ann's provides through the library (including ones owned by Gale, Infobase, and Ebsco), allow you to import a source directly from an article into your NoodleTools project. This way, you don't have to fill in any boxes, etc. This works a bit differently with each database, but they all require that you have NoodleTools open and your project active when you import a source. 

• CLICK HERE for instructions about how to import a source from a Gale database. The basic information will apply to all databases that provide direct import.

3. Use "Quick Cite" to Add a Source
You can use this method when you have a pre-formatted source citation (such you might find at the end of an article from a database).

• Click the green "New Source" tab at the top left.
• Keep clicking through, describing your source until you get to the form. At the top, you'll see a button at the top near the right that says "Quick Cite: Copy and Paste a Citation." Click there, then paste in the pre-formatted source-citation that you have copied from a database or elsewhere.
• The down-side of using this method is that NoodleTools won't be able to automatically make footnotes/in-line citations for you using sources entered this way. (But you can format them yourself.)
• CLICK HERE for more detailed instructions for using Quick Cite.