A research journal can help you stay organized as you delve into sources for your project.  Keep a running list of the relevant people, organizations, events, places, dates, and themes you discover in your reading. And keep track of the website, keywords and database searches you do to streamline your efforts as your project moves forward. A record of your research will help keep you focused. 

Bubbl.us

Developing keywords from your research topic question is the first place to start before research. The video below will unpack how to do this task. You can use Bubbl.us to keep all your keywords including related terms and synonyms in one place. It also can help to visually see how terms are related to others. See the example below.