• The relevant information that is available (police records, medical or forensic reports, etc.). Consider the key political factors in the region while developing the template, as well as other considerations such as ethnicity, religion, and region of origin of the persons involved in the alleged violation. Update all case sheets when new information is made available. Consider creating a database that indexes the information that is obtained and important. This includes individual complaints, victim/witness testimonies, documentary, forensic, artifacts and other types of testimonies, as discussed in Chapter 3. Moreover, use a field book to write down day-to-day activities and choices that are made. For instance, how interviewees were selected, how they reacted to particular questions, etc. A field book is a (small) notebook that can easily be taken along when going into the field and can be used at any moment to take (brief) notes. This information can be completed at a later stage, as well as be converted into a(n) (electronic) database. 182 The two steps to organize information are cataloguing information and physically storing it. 4.2.2 Cataloguing Information Cataloguing is the production of a short record containing sufficient information about a document. In order to manage the large amount of information that may be collected concerning serious human rights violations, keep records that briefly describe all of the documents in your possession. Including this short record in a list can be very useful to retrieve information. In a catalogue, each item is a record in and of itself, containing information such as the title, author, and a description of the contents. It can be a simple list, or a series of secondary documents arranged in a specific way. 183 A common method of cataloguing is to produce catalogue cards. When doing so, ensure that each card contains copies of the relevant information relating to each document. Also ensure that there is a card for each access point, which refers to the heading at the top of each card, such as 182 Amnesty International and CODESRIA, Ukweli. Monitoring and Documenting Human Rights Violations in Africa: A Handbook, 24 (2000), available at https://www.amnesty.nl/sites/default/files/public/ukw_eng.pdf. 183 A card catalogue is such a list where each reference is recorded on a separate card. 119