Abby,

My wife uses a panasonic voice recorder that uses an XD card for storage. She's been very successful in using it with research projects, as well as school work. She has multiple mics for it, which works well when she's doing panel sessions, as well as a directional, that's good for noisy locations.

The nice thing about having it in digital is that my wife does a lot of collaborations with folks around the country. Having it in an electronic form allows her to attach sound clips to Word documents for distribution without any conversion required.

Now, if I could just stop her from stealing the XD card from my Fuji camera when she needs more space...