The preferred citation manual for sociology is the ASA guide, which can be found either in the Reference Room of 4th Libe or for sale in the bookstore.  It is based upon the Chicago Manual of Style so look there for further guidance on tricky citations.

Handwritten notes are great (but hard to back up), and copy-pasted links are fine, but if you want something a little more searchable, re-usable, and less easily lost, here are some options for saving and organizing your research documents. Plus, these tools help automate the formatting of your citations for your paper. These are especially useful for students writing (or thinking about writing) comps.

Zotero

EndNote

The default installation of Zotero does not come with the ASA style, but it is easy to get it from the Zotero Style Repository and install it in your Zotero application.

1. Go to the Zotero Style Repository, search for ASA and click on it to download the style file (or just download using this link - right click and "save as").
2. Open your Zotero application.
3. To install, either:
   1. Double click the downloaded style file to install it, OR
   2. In the Zotero application, open Preferences, go to the Cite tab and the Styles section. Click the plus button and navigate to the file you just downloaded. 

You can find more styles at the Zotero Style Repository and complete instructions for adding styles in the Zotero wiki.

Nothing's worse than copying down a URL incorrectly, or putting a bunch of web sites into one browser's bookmarks and then moving to another computer with no access to what you saved. These tools help you keep track of your work, especially when you use multiple lab computers.