…paraphrase your sources while you take notes, not later.

… paraphrasing is often better than copying. First, it’s faster, which is especially crucial if you’re in the archives. Second, it forces you to assimilate ideas. Copying verbatim is really a way of being lazy by pushing off the hard work of thinking, but paraphrasing while taking notes lets you mix your ideas with the sources you’re working from. You end up with a record not just of the source but of why it is important to your research. And third, by paraphrasing while taking notes, you’ve already done some of the work towards producing a draft.

via Take Better Notes by Paraphrasing – ProfHacker – The Chronicle of Higher Education.