Novel Research Software Options

My adorable writing companion.

How do you save and sort information when doing research for a novel?

In the past I used OneNote. This allowed easy copy and pasting of pictures and ideas when doing research. It has lots of functionality and free with the Word Suite. It was a good choice when I was in high school/college (due to the free part) and it was simple to use, with an overall small learning curve for those already used to Office. I can see using it again in the future.

I've tried Scrivner but that distinctly didn't work for me. All of the features that are supposed to save a writer time seem to take up more time for me. (Both for the research and writing phases.) I knew plenty of writers who love this software, but it's not for me.

Recently I used DokuWiki to make my own Wiki for the world. There's an extra time allotment needed to get the level of formatting that I want but it's the easiest at showing off holes in world development, or ties between a character and the world. As long as I have time this is worth the investment.

Aeon is my newest experiment. It's a timeline device that was designed for writers. It's great for keeping track of dates and it'll automatically tell me how old everyone was during specified events. So far it's worth it's weight in gold just for that, but I'm sure I'll post again with a thorough review after playing with it some more.

What software do you use when researching a novel?