Managing Bibliography By Spreadsheet

In this post, I walk through how I structure and use a bibliography spreadsheet—from initial setup to prioritization, assessment strategies, and color-coded insights. Whether you’re in the thick of a new project or trying to wrangle a pile of PDFs into something coherent, this system can help you turn “reading” into actual, visible progress.

INTRO: WHY SPREADSHEETS

Smart people all over academe swear by their own choice of bibliographic tools. Zotero. Mendeley, EndNote: citation managers of all sorts are lovely. But that’s not how I work anymore. EndNote once ate my close-to-a-thousand item listing, and while I got most of it back due to my back-up diligence, it took me untold frustrating hours and permanently pissed me off. And Zotero doesn’t appreciate my multiple identities. Wait, which account am I logged in on? Let’s just say, I have developed serious trust issues on the software front.

Thus, I’m a spreadsheet fan. Give me that good, old-fashioned, sortable, controllable overview of what I’m doing, hosted on my home device, and I’m a happy camper. (By which I mean happy scholar; happy camper is NEXT weekend!)

It’s true, I have to remember which spreadsheet had what. And I’m at the edges of managing all the things for the next book, with nested sheets and a sense that I’d better plan a weekend retreat to review it all. But, article-wise, there’s nothing like a spreadsheet to give you a sense of your bibliography!

If you want to focus on how to shape the content of your bibliography, I got a start at describing my technique in my post on jump-starting a scholarly article. Here I  focus on what to do once you have a sense of what you want to read. I borrowed some of my approach from Raul Pacheco-Vega, https://www.raulpacheco.org/, and if you like reading about approaches to scholarship you should absolutely subscribe to him. He’s brilliant at sharing how he works, and his approach is enough like mine that I browse there regularly to see if I want to include any recent posts in my course reading-lists.

SET UP THE SPREADSHEET (AND READING PLAN)

My approach to article bibliography starts with mechanics. I open a spreadsheet (for me, LibreOffice has been working, though I will often import to Microsoft Office for sorting purposes later in the process). I generally name the file with at least two elements: a one or two word title, plus the designation “_30day” to remind me that this is the go-fast assessment of the literature.

Sample Filenames

Why 30 days? Well, a 30-day reading challenge is bite-sized. We can typically pledge to find at least 20 minutes for 30 consecutive days, and if you take 20 minutes a day every day to say, “what is this thing and why is it important,” you can build up a picture of your area pretty quickly. So, I generally target having 30 items to start, and then add to it as I work through my reading. (To keep my momentum, I treat books as a series of chapters, and each chapter is an “item” on the spreadsheet. Your mileage may vary.)

Why a consistent naming element like _30day? Well, “Bibliography” tends to get overused elsewhere in my life – other people’s bibliography PDFs download that way; students send me bibliographies all the time for this project or that one. Nobody sends me documents labeled _30day – so searching on it in my hard drive makes it easy to find!

So now you have a named file, and a pile of bibliography to enter. I plug the full citation into the spreadsheet, one per row, properly formatted to your preferred style. I’m a modified Chicago practitioner, myself; I keep the city for book citations, for instance, since some journals require it and others prohibit it – I clean that sort of thing up at the “final proofing” stage. And I’m forever forgetting WHERE the page references come for an article in a collection so I know I’ll have to fix that later too. The point is to get the details in so you’ve got them to hand.

And then, I add the “working columns” for the bibliography. Here’s my header list from a recent project, columns A through R:

    • Author, Year, Priority, Status, Citation    
    • Author's Big Idea, Gap They Fill, Paper Sections
    • evidence 1, evidence 2, evidence 3, evidence 4
    • quote 1, quote 2, quote 3, quote 4, other,
    • cited works, abstract from elsewhere

If you want, you can download a copy of the 30day spreadsheet template .

As you can see, some columns want to be wide, and others can be relatively narrow to start. I do a mix of word-wrapping and letting the text trail off into invisibility as I go; I toggle those features regularly as I’m working with my sheet. But setting things up gets me ready to make visible progress, and I’m a sucker for having my work show-as-I-go. Yay, dopamine.

WORK THE LIST

The good news is that the first part of working the list is easy to do. This is a great end-of-day or start-of-day activity since it doesn’t require much brainpower. Take the first columns -- Author, Year, Priority, Status, Citation – and plug them in. I find author and year sorting to be useful, though technically you could manage that with the Citation column. But that lets me do Author/Date placeholders as I write, and translate easily to full citation. It works for me.

Prioritizing is up to you. I tend to choose a number from 5 (read first!) to 1 (read when I get there). I might have 7 “read first” assignments, but that just means that it will get done in that first week’s pass.

Status, on the other hand, is a management tool. I’ve evolved my own shorthand if it’s helpful:  

• HAVE means it’s a PDF in my file-folder or notes in a file somewhere.
• DONE means I’ve actually assessed it.
• READ ME means I’ve assessed it and want to look at it more closely.
• NOT means I’ve read it and it isn’t right for the current project.
• ILL-Date means I placed an order for it.
• FETCH means I need to head to the library to grab that thing.
• A blank in that space means I have some bibliographic hunting to do to get on top of it; that often happens with new citations at the bottom of the list. I save those for brain-dead time.
• AGAIN means my brain wasn’t up to it this time, and I should come back to it later.

ASSESS THE ITEM: AIC READING

AIC reading – Abstract, Introduction, and Conclusion – is the law of the land. Seriously, we diligent types were taught to read things in order. But, and here comes a HUGE caveat, reading in order is NOT the best way to get the info to stick. Instead, move around the article or book chapter with abandon.

Start by reading the abstract. What does it claim it’s going to do? Then, read the intro, or the first 3-5 paragraphs if the item lacks subheaders. What’s the context, what’s the author’s stated task, what’s the thesis? Then flip to the conclusion: what’s the big claim and why does it matter?

Generally, I recommend performing an AIC, and then going back and filling out the next couple of columns: Author's Big Idea, Gap They Fill, Paper Sections. (I’m serious about the paper sections – you don’t have to quote the author’s subtitles, but give the gist of how they divvy up their information. Your later search strategies will thank you.) Each of these is telling you where they are trying to fit into the scholarly conversation, and also what will be useful for you in situating your own work.

This is not a “read every word” process. Be one with that.

By now, you’ll have spent somewhere between ten and twenty minutes on your item. Urgent class prep pressing? Household tasks such as making and eating food on the necessary list? Then you can pause and put a pin in it. Change your HAVE to DONE or NOT or, very rarely, AGAIN – that last a designation to tell you to come back to it, perhaps with another cup of coffee in your system. This is progress, and progress is good.

READ FOR THE EVIDENCE

Once you have time, move on to a more detailed assessment. Even this may be a “skim” more than a “read deeply.” Remember my status column? Part of the overview of the literature is designed to tell me which of the items I want to prioritize for full reading. They get a “READ ME” status until I’ve got an afternoon slot or a morning coffee work-cycle to spend the hour or two to work through details. So your task at this stage is to figure out how the author is working and what they have to say, and with what tools.

For this stage, I tend to flop through once, with an eye for what each paragraph is doing. Is it documentary? Analytical? Critical-theory based? This information will presumably marry up with the article sections you’ve already reviewed, and now you’re learning more deeply what this particular contribution is offering. As I go, I make comments on the evidence used and on quotes I may want to integrate in my own writing later on.

This is a kind of quick-and-dirty notetaking, but I’m careful to put quotes around quoted material or key phrases, and to put my initials in front of material that I am saying in response to that bit of the  reading. Here’s a typical entry:

Bijsterveld says: “inalienable objects”… “they symbolize or represent owners… their power and virtues.” (Bijsterveld 2007, p. 86). Of these, Bijsterveld lists arms, jewellery, crowns and regalia, relics, precious and holy books, objects connected with princely descent, costly textiles, precious materials, names, stories, sagas, etc: CJC SAYS: all get their power from associative knowledge – the relational ties of donor/recipient, and the meaning of the context, not the object itself.

(Bijsterveld, Arnoud-Jan A. Do ut des: Gift Giving, Memoria, and Conflict Management in the Medieval Low Countries, Middeleeuwse Studies en Bronnen CIV (Hilversum: Verloren, 2007), Ch 4)

Is it eloquent prose? No. Does it get the content across in ways I can mentally access it again? You bet. This is the quick-and-dirty approach. Writing will emerge from this, but this is only a single stone in the creek-crossing of knowledge-building. You’re going to need to heft several of these before the path forward emerges – so don’t get too wrapped up in getting it perfect; focus on getting it down.

How do I note-take at this point? This is the joy of the spreadsheet. I toggle back and forth from evidence to quote and back again. Occasionally, an item will be SO rich that it actually gets a second row in my spreadsheet, but mostly those go into the READ ME and get their own “document” with notes and responses. How do I decide? Mood of the moment, really. And, I always try to leave enough keyword info in the spreadsheet that a term search will pull up the right set of articles.

And then there are last two columns. If you had to choose 3 items from this person’s bibliography, which were the most important to them? I give a shorthand citation, unless I decide that I really need to read it too in which case it gets a short-hand reference in the right-hand column AND an entry in my own citation column. And, I cut-and-paste the abstract in if it’s convenient. About a quarter to a third of items wind up with abstracts cut in.

MANAGE INFORMATION: COLORS AND COLUMNS

But wait, there’s more. One of the habits I’ve developed that keeps me moving forward quickly is the use of color. As I take notes, I find that certain things leap out as important to my own argument. Those cells become green. There are others that need more thought, or might apply, or make me mad in one of those “that’s not it” sorts of ways that helps clarify what I am thinking. Those become yellow (or if urgent, orange), because I want to come back to them and sit with the idea some more. I’ve sometimes used urgent red to get my attention the next work cycle or to track through inter-library loan until that issue is resolved. But mostly, my spreadsheet is green, yellow/orange, or void.
 

Excerpt from a Shakespeare-related 30-day bibliography for a conference paper, showing the use of color

 

The orange cell here actuall included 4 things: a quote, a cross reference to another scholar, my own thoughts, and the details of what I needed to track down for my argument.

Dr Johnson: "The meek sorrows and virtuous distress of Catherine have funished some scenes which may justly numbered among the greatest efforts of tragey. But the genius of Shakepseare comes in and goes out with Catherine. Every other part may be easily conceived, and easily written." Perhaps per Hannah Pritchard, recreated role annually at Drury lane 1752-1761. CJC: the long popularity of the play in performance speaking against its relative neglect by critics. (Rep of Sarah Siddons, helen Faucit, Ellen Terry, Ellen Tree, Charlotte Cushman. Bowers p. 29-30)  Similarly, the XXX thatcher and gooch suggest that the play is more amenable to the sounding and staged interpretations than the literary ones.

(Bowers, A. Robin. 1988.  "'The Merciful Construction of Good Women': Katherine of Aragon and Pity in Shakespeare's King Henry VIII." Christianity and Literature 37, no. 3 (1988): 29-51.)

You’ll notice the typos (ewwww, typos) and the short-hand; notes are not prose! Think of your notes as an action item, a step on the way toward actual argument. Don't polish the stone -- it just needs to get you across the stream.

A second add-on tool is the “additional column” trick. As I’m working with a given topic, it can be handy to group the bibliography in various ways. For the prayers-before-an-icon article that I’m currently researching, for instance, I added both a “category” column and a “statue” column to my spreadsheet so that I can group all the “gesture” bibliography, or take a look at everything that includes statues as a part of their evidence. These are functional project-based bibliographies, and infinitely adaptable to need.

WHY SPREADSHEETS

And that brings us to why I spreadsheet to begin with. I don’t always, to be honest. My kazoo project (ahem, yes, I have a kazoo project) is a long 20-plus page document file with notes intermingled with the citations. 

 But when I want a quick overview, or when I’m trying to ready myself for writing, I’ll often back-migrate my information into spreadsheet format. The act of adding keywords or search terms serves as part of my self-discipline, a guarantee that I really actively review my information, and don’t just look at it. You know, the way one “looks” at things.

Passing your eyes over something is different than acting on it, and the spreadsheet, with its columns and colors, retyped sub-headers and great one-liners, ensures that my reading stays active. It is true that the cut-and-paste of bibliography across projects can get clunky, since some will have an extra two columns, and others five, and others none. Making sure the data align *is* a pain in the neck.

But that’s easy work, whereas accountability is hard work. Spreadsheets for me are a tool of accountability, both to what scope I want to have myself have read, and to what speed with which I want to get this project done.

And if you find a tool that hits your dopamine receptors on a regular basis to encourage you to do more of it, in a scholarly-productive way? Keep using that tool, whatever it is! For me, it’s spreadsheets for the win!

RESOURCES

Cynthia Cyrus, "How To Jump-Start a Scholarly Article: The Plan," Silences And Sounds [Blog], March 22, 2025, https://silencesandsounds.blogspot.com/2025/03/how-to-jump-start-scholarly-article-plan.html

30-day reading list template:  https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1kx8olonvggdhQk2SK7NuP8_VzRViR39Fhzb-bqPsypI/copy

Raul Pacheco-Vega website https://www.raulpacheco.org/blog/ , and especially his resources page https://www.raulpacheco.org/resources/ 

How To Jump-Start a Scholarly Article: The Plan

Elements of article planning: beginning stages

 

I’m newly collaborating with a colleague and it’s made me hyper aware of my own system of article writing. We all have quirky shortcuts, and writing is ALWAYS a case of “you do you” (and I do mean that in the nicest way possible: you really should follow the thing that works for you as a writer!). But I also love hearing how other people approach things, so thought I might usefully share my own standard ramp-up.

First, of course, is the good idea or the new data point. Something important enough to be written up, something bright and shiny, something interesting enough to pause a colleague in the hallway and talk about it. (Brainstorming ideas is a separate process, and not the subject of today’s post.)

And then, it’s time to do something with it, and that’s where we begin.

WHERE TO TARGET:

First, I figure out where I might like to write about it. I am a bonafide nerd; I keep a spreadsheet of possible venues, categorized by area. Oooo, this is medieval. No, it’s musicological. Gee, I should write for the regional history crowd. This one is definitely monastic. Whatever it is, there’s an outlet for that. (Fun fact, I also scrutinize my own article bibliographies for venues that might be a possible future locale where my words might reside. Where do my so-interesting colleagues publish? Write that place down!)

So, I generally try to envision two or three different journals where this future “thing” might go. That will be shaped by style, by content, by my current proclivity for footnotes, and by the capacity to write mere words, or to include images/tables/figures, depending on my mood and on the nature of the bright idea.

I then sit with recent issues of each, getting a sense for what the current editor/editorial team seems to like. From that, I usually find a clear target, the place I want to publish this bright shiny thing. First task in writing is always to know your audience. Done!

HOW TO START:

Starting the writing is hard, I know. So, shortcuts help. I use that “sit with the journal” time to get a sense of the shape of articles from that journal. 

• How many intro paragraphs?
• Does the article use sub-headers or continuous narrative?
• How much space devoted to the author’s method and how detailed does it get?
• How many “big sections” are typically in the main body?
• How many images / tables / figures are there?
• What kind of conclusion does it use, and how “big picture” does it get?
• What’s the total word count for each article?
• How many sources are cited? Is this one of those tour-de-force places demonstrating complete bibliographic control, or is it more “here are a bunch of related books”? I have sometimes switched target journal based on those practices. Ahem.

I make a little table from 3 to 5 of the recent articles, and I also use that time to capture the citation conventions (and translation habits) that are typical. Yes, I know that most journals have a style guide for authors, but I am here to tell you that they are … uneven … in their level of detail.

Why do all that work on topics unrelated to my bright shiny thing? Because these become your formulaic guide to how to approach your own writing.

BUILDING THE (BROAD, VERY BROAD) OUTLINE

For me, the next step is building my own article’s broad outline – capture the content in 5 to 7 big strokes, and distribute the number of paragraphs according to the shape you want it to have. Is there a climax to the article? A place where that treasured story needs to go?

Here’s where math comes in. My standard default article length is around 35 paragraphs, though my most recent article was actually 52 paragraphs after revisions, so, yeah. Choose a number somewhere between 30 and 60 paragraphs – those tables you built will help.

Of those 35 paragraphs, I figure I’ll spend about 3 paragraphs for the intro and 3 to 5 for the conclusion. Method might fall in intro or in main body, depending on my thinking and on the habits of the journal. We’re in the humanities; there is no one journalistic formula.

Then 25 to 28 “main body” paragraphs gives me space for about three categories of supporting data.  What are they? I try to come up with provisional sub-headers, since that will shape content disposition.

As a frame of reference, that collaborative article that got me thinking about this? We have 6 “content points” identified, one of which has 4 subtopics. We’ll do more extensive outlining next week, but I already feel good about where this is going.

This is also a good moment to just free associate. Do I already know of subtopics? Are there authors I should cite? Can I bullet point any of this? Whatever you have an answer to, and this is important, WRITE IT DOWN. At this point, my “progress” might look like a bullet-point list, or a mind map, or a scrawled flowchart, or several pages of word-doodles in my notebook. But it’s a first-round “capture” of what I think I might be doing.

BUILDING THE BIBLIOGRAPHY

Then comes my favorite part: building out my reading list. I do love to go trolling through the literature. I want one of those, and one of those, and three of those… My habit is to have bibliography in at least two and maybe three areas.

One is the content area, obviously, and that often includes going through my old bibliographic lists. Is this a case of “go deep” on the monastic element? The musical one? The “cool thinking about contemporary topics using the past as a case study”? The list of citations will vary depending on the answer to that question.

But the part that’s the most fun is the “how could I approach this topic” reading. There’s a whole set of topic-adjacent literature to draw on, some from people whose work I know, and others who are new to me. That’s the real permissive joy of scholarship: the adding something new to one’s own perspective.

What that looks like for me is usually thinking about one of two things: methods that match, but content that differs, or content that’s similar but spaces or times that are different. For the former, it’s reading about community music – a scholarship largely focused on 20th/21st century musicking experiences – and then applying it to 15th century Vorarlberg. For the latter, it’s reading about chaplains in England and Bavaria in order to write about chaplains in Bregenz. (Austrian-focused chaplain lit would already be in my own content area.)

This “breadth” gives me a focus for reading. My lists of “new lit” typically run from 30 to 90 items for an article, though the handbook article I wrote recently wound up at 125 items or so. (Yikes!) 

I would like to take this moment to thank the staff of the Interlibrary Loan Office without whom life would be much much much more complicated. You make what we do possible.

Not all of these articles and book chapters are going to be in the bibliography, obviously, but it gives me a chance to poke at the shape of the field. I’ll cruise through them at the rate of about 10 articles a week. Some just get the “AIC treatment” – Abstract, Introduction, Conclusion, and a bit of “what is this doing” by flipping through the middle sections of the article. Others I read fully. Still others get extensive notes and make it into my everything notebook. But all of them bring me joy. (Except that one. That one was terrible. That gives me an excuse to grump about the state of scholarship. Grump grump grump. Which brings me a bit of joy. Plus, I now get to DELIBERATELY omit it from my bibliography.)

Once I’m into reading, I’m into writing. And with an outline in hand and a bunch of notes from my reading, I’m no longer facing the proverbial “scary blank page” that causes me angst. (Note: if you came here hoping for actual writing strategies, you might look at my discussions of  strategies to avoid writer's block or strategies to organize writing tasks so you'll actually do them.)

And that, friends, is how I get started with an article. Figure out the “where,” and how it does its business; map out a high-level overview of this current project, and generate the bibliography to support that work. Then it's time to go play with your material and do more formal writing. GOOD LUCK!