Research and civic life
Literature reviews, thesis research, story files, grant libraries and oral histories: the long projects built from sources.
Research is what know.sh was built for: sources in, findings out, an overview that says what they add up to. The recipes on this shelf apply that to scholarship, reporting and community work, each with its own discipline about sources.
Treat every AI summary as a lead to check against the original, not a source to cite. The writing and the judgements stay yours.
Recipessix recipes
- 39 A literature reviewFor a second-year PhD student in public health with a review chapter due before the upgrade panelYour assistant files a finding per paper, with its DOI, across a document per theme; you read each paper, correct the finding in your own words, and write every theme’s synthesis yourself.
- 40 A thesis research baseFor a PhD candidate in history, two years into the archives and starting to write upKeep a history dissertation as a shelf: a document per chapter whose overview states its argument, with archival evidence, counter-arguments, supervisor decisions and open questions filed beneath.
- 41 An investigative story fileFor a local reporter looking into how a city contract was awardedKeep an investigation in one private file: a dated timeline, the people and companies, every record you obtained, and a list of claims that stay open until a primary source confirms them.
- 42 A grant boilerplate libraryFor the development director of a small nonprofit who writes twenty applications a year aloneKeep a nonprofit’s grant language as a library of dated, reusable sections, have your assistant assemble a first draft for each new funder from it, and refresh the numbers once a year.
- 43 An oral history collectionFor a volunteer at a town historical society cataloguing an oral history projectCatalogue a town’s oral history interviews: a document per interview with time-coded summaries and short excerpts, an index of names and places across them, and public links only for released interviews.
- 44 A book club guideFor the volunteer organiser of a library book club that reads ten books a yearYour assistant researches each book’s author, context and reception with sources and drafts questions by section; you check it, choose the questions, write the welcome, and send members one read-only link per meeting.
Index to this shelf
C
Chapter arguments, 40
City contracts, 41
Comparison tables, 39
Confidential sources, 41
Counter-arguments, 40
E
Evidence findings, 39
H
Historical societies, 43
N
Nonprofits, 42
V
Verification, 41