As you may have noticed, when I uploaded a set of primary resources items names included author/s, year and title.
For a long time I struggled to manage all the resources that I downloaded from the internet or where I bought books and made notes. Whenever I wrote a paper it became a chore to track down the actual papers.
Often when you download an article or on-line book has an odd title, eg agx4532b.pdf. I use folders to sort into content into themes. But even then I don't know what the article or book is about. And sometimes I forget how I have saved that particular article and have a hard time finding it.
Eventually I started renaming the files as I down loaded them, loosely using the Harvard citation style of Author/s. Year. Title.pdf or whatever. This has increased my success rate for finding these papers. So you save it. When you try to find it again it's easy if you can remember either the author or one or more words in the title. If you copy a sentence or paragraph I add the name of the file and the page number.
When I use it in a paper I just adjust it to meet the citation requirements of the journal or conference.
Of course that's not enough for you thesis. I suggest you start to use a biliographic tool as soon as possible. Fiona, a researcher I work with who is doing her PhD swears by Endnote. It is expensive but you may be able to access it through your university.
I'm trying out an open-source web-based tool called Zotero. You be web-based only using the Firefox browser or download a standalone version, which also synchronises with the web. There also also plug-ins for Microsoft Word or LibreOffice.
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