With the increasing availability and use of personal and especially paper and computers more and mores some of the pencil records to electronic files. Qualitative data analysis software fully supports such electronic logging and memo (see Richards 20os and Section io 4 in this volume) and they make it easy to integrate the entries of the electronic research journal with the rest of the transcribed data. In this way, our own reflections and ideas can become more than analytic tools-they can become data that can be submitted to further analysis. Altrichter and Holly(zoos) emphasize that an important aspect of the research journal as a data source is to include "descriptive sequences" such as accounts of activities and events, or reconstructions of dialogues. In such accounts, the authors stress, details are more important than summaries and we need to focus on the particular rather than the general. Exact quotes(marked with quotation marks) are welcome, particularly words and phrases that are typical of a person. Altrichter and Holly also make some practical.