Research techniques?

Hello everyone;

Researching is a hobby of mine, yet I am not an expert or a professional in that field, so im wondering if there's any sort of "procedure" to do a good, rich, well organized research?? When doing a research, all what I do is that I gather lots of information on a specific subject, then I sit and study the info, sort it, summarize it, and ommit some of it till I end up with a concise "set of info" ..which I suppose would be my "research"

I maybe very wrong with the way im handling the research, but im very eager to find out about the latest, best and most suitable technqiues or procedures to do a research.Most of the researches im doing are personal.
Researches I did:
Earthquakes (1999)
Norway (2000)
Pollution (2002)

Research im currently working on : Norwegian Red Cross

So please do share with me your knowledge and experience about researching, and if you have any websites/links/docs you'd like to share, you're very welcome.