- Aug 2024
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The daily cards and journal entries are obviously indexed by chronological date and then within tabbed sections by month and year.
The rest of the other cards with notes are given individual (decimal) numbers and and then are put into numerical order. These numbered cards are then indexed by putting related subject/topic/category words from them onto a separate index card which cross references either a dated card or the numbered card to which it corresponds. These index cards with topical words/phrases are then filed alphabetically into a tabbed alphabetical section (A-Z).
As an example with the card in this post, if I wanted to remember all the books I buy from Octavia's Bookshelf, then I'd create a card titled "Octavia's Bookshelf" and list the title along with the date 2024-08-13 and file it alphabetically within the "O" tab section of the index. Obviously this might be more useful if I had more extensive notes about the book or its purchase on the 2024-08-13 card. I did create a short journal card entry about the bookstore on 08-13 because it was the first time I visited the bookstore in it's new location and decor, so there are some scant notes about my impressions of that which are cross-indexed to that Octavia's Bookshelf card. Thus my Octavia's Bookshelf card has an entry with "The Book Title, 2024-08-13 (J)(R)" where the '(J)' indicates there's a separate journal entry for that day and the '(R)' indicates there's also a receipt filed next to that day's card.
I also created an "Author Card" with the author of the book's name, the title, publication date, etc. I included the purchase date and the reason why I was interested in the book. I'll use that same card to write notes on that particular book as I read it. These author cards are filed in a separate A-Z tabbed 'Bibliography' section for easily finding them as well. (I suppose I could just put them into the primary A-Z index, but I prefer having all the authors/books (I have thousands) in the same section.)
I also have a rolodex section of people filed alphabetically, so I can easily look up Steve and Sonia separately and see what I might have gotten them on prior birthdays as well as notes about potential future gift ideas. I had tickler cards with their names on them filed in early August and now that they're in my to do list, I've moved those cards to August 2025, ready for next year's reminder. Compared to a typical Future Log I don't do nearly as much writing and rewriting when migrating. I just migrate a card forward until it's done or I don't need it anymore.
If you've used a library card index before, the general idea is roughly the same, you're just cross-indexing more than books by title, author and subject. You can index by day, idea, project, or any other thing you like. My card index cabinet is really just a large personal database made out of paper and metal.
The secret isn't to index everything—just the things you either want to remember or know you'll want to look up later and use/re-use.
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On many of the older 40s/50s typewriters, the same key will work on almost everything. If you search online there are a few people who have posted a 3D printable key that you can download and may be able to print at your local library. I'm guessing based on the limited photo, yours is an early 40s Smith-Corona.
I've tried a few local locksmiths who don't seem to carry these keys anymore.
I've got a late 40s Smith-Corona latch that occasionally self-locks and for ages I used a bent paperclip in the rough shape of the old keys to easily pick the lock with just 10 seconds of jiggling around inside. Roughly a 2 mm straight section of paperclip with a 1mm "T" section that sticks out (even just on one side) about 4-5mm and then continues straight ought to work if you're in a jam.
The level of security these keys/locks provide is minimal at best.
If you go the online route to buy a key, they can be quite expensive, so if you're a collector, just wait for a machine that comes with one and you'll have another typewriter for "free" in the deal.
reply to u/Succu6us66 at https://old.reddit.com/r/typewriters/comments/1eqk6rd/typewriter_lock/
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reply to u/IndividualCoast9039 at https://new.reddit.com/r/typewriters/comments/1endi5d/screenwriter_here/
There's really no such thing as a screenplay specific machine, though for ease of use, you'll surely want one with a tabulator (tabs). If you want to hew toward the standard screenplay formatting look for pica machines (10 characters per inch) rather than elite machines (11-12 characters per inch).
SoCal is lousy with lots of great machines. If you want something that's going to work "out of the box" you'll pay a few bones more, but unless you're a tinkerer, it's definitely worth it.
I'd recommend checking out the following shops/repair joints near LA that specialize in machines for writers. Most will let you try out the touch and feel of a few in person to figure out what will work best for you. Putting your hands on actual machines will help you know which one you'll want for yourself.
- Helmut Schulze, Rees Electronics / Star Typewriters, 2140 Westwood Blvd. #224, Los Angeles, CA 90025. 310-475-0859 or 877-219-1450. Fax: 310-475-0850. E-mail star@startypewriters.com. Schulze has many years of experience and has restored typewriters of famous writers for collector Steve Soboroff.
- Aaron Therol @ Typewriter Connection, DTLA, https://www.typewriterconnection.com/
- Bob Marshall, Typewriter Muse, Riverside, CA. Service, restoration, and sales. Website: typewritermuse.com.
- Rubin Flores at U.S. Office Machine Co. over in Highland Park 323-256-2111 (better at repairs, restoration; I don't think he keeps stock)
I'd generally endorse most of the advice on models you'll find in these sources which are geared specifically toward writers, all three sources have lots experience and reasonable bona fides to make such recommendations.
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h9dXflhDed0
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aKMt-aCHZZk
- https://typewriterreview.com/2020/01/10/top-10-writerly-typewriters/
All machines are slightly different, so pick the one that speaks to you and your methods of working.
If it helps to know what typewriters actual (screen) writers have used in the past, check out https://site.xavier.edu/polt/typewriters/typers.html
Beyond this Just My Typewriter has a few short videos that'll give you a crash course on Typewriter 101: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLJtHauPh529XYHI5QNj5w9PUdi89pOXsS
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Interesting. I prefer to use emergent "categories" rather than a predetermined set. Similar to how Luhmann did it originally. Most of my top-level cats are pertaining to my Grand Theory of Optimal Education but this is not a rule. Additionally, I do indeed get away from the topical content the further down I go naturally. 7 = Lifelong Learning 71 (or 7.1 for readability) = Reading 71/1e2 = Intellectualism vs. Learning with regards to critical analysis and thinking 71/1e2a = Original Thought I could've created original thought as its own branch but I found it related enough to a card on reading I made (particularly with regards to intellectualism) to insert it there. Warm regards, Mr. Hoorn
Reply to Kathleen Spracklen's video
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Alternate systems for helping to thin out typewriter collections:
Designer William Morris' weighing system:
“Have nothing in your houses that you do not know to be useful or believe to be beautiful.”
I once had a collector friend who loved standard typewriters, so his weighing system was as follows:<br /> - If it weighs over 25 pounds, keep it<br /> - If it weighs less than 25 pounds, sell it off
And naturally, minimalist Marie Kondo's system:<br /> - Does it spark joy?
Joe Van Cleave also had another video for creating a minimal collection based on categories of typewriter which may also be useful for some: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Ej6kd1FsnE
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Doesn't this method of bib-card IDs get cumbersome to write? I simply use the author's last name... In the case of Adler it would be "Adler/1" and "Adler/1(b)" for the bib-card... Referencing the source on a main note would be "Adler, page number" If I then read another source by Adler, for example "Intellect: Mind over Matter" which I plan to read, it would be "Adler1/1", "Adler1/1(b)" and "Adler1, page number" Seems much easier to remember for me, and also more readable.
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Useful advice. I will not integrate it into notebooks most likely though, I'll use the principles to add certain sections to my slip-box. Doing this in a Zettelkasten manner allows me to: A) Bypass page size limitations, I do not have to think about how many pages to leave free as I can simply add more index cards to the sequence B) Have both the treasury and manuscript style at the same time... C) Reference everything whenever I need it for my overall research for my Grand Theory of Optimal Education, and other writing/research projects. For the treasury I can simply thumb through "Wise Saying" collection cards without any particular organization/order (although I might add one, I have to think about this)... And for the manuscript I can just reference the unique IDs of those sayings and then write about them. This is the ideal scenario for me.
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Lol seriously? How serendipitous I came across your channel then. Yes I am in the Scheper tribe, but I am not active as much over there--as well as the fact that I do not pay for the newsletter anymore due to finances.
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Big Blue Gets Renewed by [[Joe Van Cleave]]
I like the aftermarket upgrades you've made.
The Cheers reference reminds me that I've been trying to pair drinks with machines as I write. I had a blue cocktail on a cruise to Alaska last year that used glacier ice (which is blue), but since that's not easy to source in ABQ, maybe try an "Electric Iced Tea" which is a variation on the Long Island iced tea but which swaps blue curaçao for the triple sec and a clear lemon-lime based soda for the cola.
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How different is Bob Doto's A System for Writing from Antinet Zettelkasten?
Doto's book is far more focused, well-written, and actually edited. Scheper's less well written and in need of heavy editing. Save yourself the extra 400 pages and spend that time practicing the craft instead.
If you were starting from scratch without any knowledge of the area, I would highly recommend Doto's work, possibly mention Ahrens in passing, and not suffer anyone to mention Scheper's book. If you're an academic, I would recommend Umberto Eco or perhaps if a historian, one of the many books on historical method like Barzun, Gottschalk, or Goutor.
As background, both Scheper and Doto sent me pre-publication drafts of their work-in-progress to read. I've also read the majority of other books, papers, articles, and works in the space over the past 150+ years including nearly 100% of the references footnoted the two texts referenced. See also: https://boffosocko.com/research/zettelkasten-commonplace-books-and-note-taking-collection/
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- Jul 2024
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My fiance got a white Adler Tippa recently, but is unsure of the exact model or year. We looked up the serial number but nothing has come up even on the database. The Tippa plate just says Tippa, not Adler Tippa, so it can't be too old. Any ideas? Serial number: 10148440
reply to u/DinoPup87 at https://new.reddit.com/r/typewriters/comments/1efzeor/adler_tippa_id/
It's a common misconception that the database lists all serial numbers.
You'll need to identify the make (and preferably the model) to search the database. Then you'll want to look at the serial numbers which your serial number appears between to be able to identify the year (or month if the data is granular enough) your machine was made. Reading the notes at the header of each page will give you details for how best to read and interpret the charts for each manufacturer. Notes and footnotes will provide you with additional details when available.
You can then compare your machine against others which individuals have photographed and uploaded to the database. Feel free to add your typewriter as an example by making an account of your own. Doing this is sure to help researches and other enthusiasts in the future. Don't forget photos of your manual, tools which came with your machine, your case, and original dated purchase receipts if you have them.
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needs a new ink ribbon
Chances are that you've got your original metal spools, and if so, definitely keep them. You can make a quick measurement, but I'm guessing you're going to want 1/2" or 13mm wide universal ribbon.
You can buy this in many places and in various color combinations (if you have a bichrome machine—look for a black/white/red switch which can usually be found on the front of your machine) for just a few dollars for 16 yards or about 14 meters to fill up a 2 inch diameter spool. Often it will come on cheap universal plastic spools which you can use to wind onto your own original metal spools if necessary.
Some machines often make use of proprietary mechanisms or geometry on their spools to effectuate the auto-reverse mechanism of the machine (though you'd have to check on your particular unit). Many machines after the 40s used small grommets on the ribbon itself to trigger the auto-reverse mechanism. If yours doesn't, you can trim these off with scissors as you spool the ribbon onto your machine if you're worried they'll get in the way.
Some smaller ultra-portables can and often do use smaller diameter spools which only fit 12 yards of ribbon, but you can always cut your ribbon down from bigger spools if necessary.
A few good sources of ribbon can be found at https://site.xavier.edu/polt/typewriters/tw-faq.html#q1.
If you don't have the original spools and the cheap plastic universal ones don't work on yours, you can find replacements via https://www.ribbonsunlimited.com/ or by calling around to repair shops which may have extras https://site.xavier.edu/polt/typewriters/tw-manuals.html
Incidentally, having your typewriter make and model as well as serial number can be helpful. You can often identify the model via https://typewriterdatabase.com/ if it's not on your typewriter directly. I'm guessing from the 2Y5852 that you've got a Good Companion No. 2 circa 1942, but you can track that down by looking at the database and individual galleries with photos.
If you don't have one already, you might find a manual for your machine (or one very similar to it) at https://site.xavier.edu/polt/typewriters/tw-manuals.html
reply to u/Fancy_Temporary_5902 at https://new.reddit.com/r/typewriters/comments/1eg176q/im_trying_to_id_a_typewriter_of_my_dads_as_it/
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Does anyone here use a purpose made typewriter desk? How do you like it? Alternatively, has anyone tried one and found it wasn't for them?
I've used the small typewriter tables with drop sides and wheels before. I appreciate their small size and ability to move around. I'm actively looking for a new one at the moment. (I sold the original 20 years ago when downsizing during a move between apartments and prior to restarting my collection.)
I currently use a dual pedestal desk and and usually have my typewriters on the pull out writing drawers. This drops the typewriter an inch and makes one's typing position (27" off the floor) much more comfortable than having the typewriter higher up 29-31" for most modern desks and tables.
I have tested a pedestal desk with a spring-loaded typewriter platform that moves up and out of the desk after opening a door. This was an excellent experience, and if I find another, I will surely purchase it. The tough part is that they take up a lot of space as the internal desk space is given entirely to hiding the typewriter when not in use. They're definitely great if you have a heavy 30+ pound standard typewriter that's not so mobile.
The third type are wooden desks with two desk height levels. One for traditional desk work and a second lower one as the typewriter platform. The lower height is obviously much more ergonomic for typing for long periods. On most of these desks, the inset typewriter space is most often given completely over for the typewriter to be there permanently. If your plan is to only have a typewriter, then jump, but their use is more difficult if you're sharing that space with a computer and need to move the two back and forth regularly. Additionally, the wooden desks have either permanent cut outs or can be flipped over to hide the cutout and make the entire desk space flush when the typewriter isn't in use. You'll have to use your own gut to decide which of these two might be best for you. I recently saw a reasonable version of a convertible wooden desk at https://abqtypers.substack.com/p/convertible-typewriter-desk
I find these pop up pretty regularly in the $200-500 range. Often owners don't want them because they don't use typewriters, and they don't move easily, so they're likely to come down in price pretty quickly/easily.
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danallosso.substack.com danallosso.substack.com
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I've felt guilty in the past that often we don't directly discuss the book and what it says, but since we've each individually had our own "conversations with the author", our sessions then become a method of taking those extant (hidden discussions) and bringing them to a group to have not only discussions with each other, but extend those discussions with other books we've read and connecting them with reading, watching, listening we've done with other sources. In some sense, we're creating connections (conversations) with all the other things rather than necessarily discussing the exact thing at hand. This is a different form of work than the work of the initial discussion we individually have with the author (in this case Adrian Johns) and this is something many book groups don't go past.
I don't feel so guilty about it anymore...
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Two "5" keys (?!?) (SC Poweriter)
reply to u/Deep-Seaworthiness48 at https://www.reddit.com/r/typewriters/comments/1e5gh4p/two_5_keys_sc_poweriter/
Things like that happened on alternate language/region typewriters. I've got a Dutch keyboard layout that repeats a % symbol twice.
It's likely that the pound symbol was needed/required so they pulled one from a pre-existing typeslug and key cap on a keyboard where the £/5 key was common and replaced the 1/! which in the era was widely known could be done by alternate means (aka lower case 'l' and '.' backspace '''.
The value of the £ was more important to the typist and because of typeface manufacture was probably easier to do in the £/5 existing combination from something like the English No. 1028, International No. 1060 keyboard, the Brazilian No. 1065, or the Danish No. 1047 all of which paired the £/5. See also: https://munk.org/typecast/2023/02/03/1954-smith-corona-scm-typewriter-type-styles-and-keyboards-catalog/
Off hand, I don't see another S-C keyboard combination from that time period that had a £ paired with any other glyph/character. In the "change-a-type" time period they likely wouldn't have done a custom black key for the £/5 when they were already manufacturing one in a matching white. If they didn't also swap out the key at the far right end of that bank, I would expect it to be a standard black '+/=' key cap and slug.
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ribbon carrier (vibrator) not moving
reply to u/67comet at https://www.reddit.com/r/typewriters/comments/1e4hu0s/smith_corona_electra_120_ribbon_carrier_not_moving/
That piece is called a ribbon vibrator which moves the ribbon up and down. They generally operate on gravity and as a result they need to be clean and free from oil, gunk, hair, dust, etc. Usually they slide up and down freely. There's a colloquial saying in the typewriter space that "A typewriter isn't really broken unless it's clean and broken."
Occasionally ribbon vibrators can become bent which makes them inoperable and this can be remedied with some light forming (bending) with an appropriate screwdriver or needle nosed plier. You can search YouTube and you'll find a variety of videos for cleaning and forming these back into shape so that they slide cleanly.
As for your missing 1/! slug, it's unlikely that you'll find someone selling just the slug itself and then you'll need to solder it on perfectly and/or adjust it slightly with appropriate tools to get the right alignment. Far better is to check around with repair shops that might have the same or similar machines which they're parting out and then you could request one. Your best bet is to purchase the entire typebar and slug assembly from a donor machine which you can then swap out into your machine and skip the soldering. For this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pFMu6dUROGA can give you tips.
To find donor machines, try repair shops on this list: https://site.xavier.edu/polt/typewriters/tw-repair.html
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I notice you put sticky markers into the book... Two questions. A) Does this not take too much effort/time for an inspectional read a la Adler? B) What is the purpose of the sticky markers? Warm regards, Mr. Hoorn -- Fellow Antinetter
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What are the must have tools for a maintenance of a typewriter, some tools you recommend, some that make maintenance a little bit easier
reply to u/riatai69 at https://www.reddit.com/r/typewriters/comments/1e3c0zy/tools_for_a_deep_maintenance/
You can do a tremendous amount with just a few things:
- thin Philips screwdriver with a small magnet to hold/catch screws
- small adjustable wrench
- bottle of Simple Green (or other mild cleaner)
- can of mineral spirits (naphtha, paint thinner, varnish remover, PB B'laster etc.) with a standard/cheap restaurant refillable ketchup/mustard squeeze bottle
- Toothbrush (and/or brass bristle brush)
- canned air
- a piece of string (useful for reattaching some pieces without more specialized tools, and particularly for reattaching springs)
- light machine oil (gun or sewing machine) for very lightly oiling your carriage rails
- YouTube for watching lots of typewriter repair videos
If you want to go higher end and do a lot more
- a set of spring hooks with push/pull ends
- full set of small wrenches
- more custom screw drivers
- a nice thick felt pad (approx 15" x 15" x 1/2"+ for having a place to sit your typewriter on without scratching it up)
- a small lazy susan big enough to set your typewriter on to more easily manipulate it
- air compressor (to replace your canned air)
- bins and trays for storing typewriter parts and screws while you're taking them apart and putting back together
- a set up for spraying down/washing out typewriters (DIY ideas include paint roller trays or plastic milk crates as a base and plastic bins for catching the run off)
- wiping cloths or similar cloth rags for wiping things down
If you want to go crazy
- Keyring pliers
- set up for respooling ribbon from 330+ yard spools
- The Manual Typewriter Repair Bible https://typewriterrepairbible.com/ as well as various other repair manuals and all the tools listed within them.
- storage shelving for 100+ typewriters
- a small collection of machines for parting out
- an 800+ square foot workshop space
- a publisher for you book about typewriters
When you're really ready for full-on insanity
- professional dunk tank and fire suppression equipment
- Your own typewriter repair shop and storefront
- I hear there's one for sale in Cambridge, MA https://www.bostonglobe.com/2024/05/17/business/cambridge-typewriter-new-owner-retirement-tom-furrier/ It probably comes with everything mentioned above as well as lots of machines for parting out.
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Good video. Funnily enough, I related it to Mazlow's hierarchy of competence a minute before you mentioned it. (Mr. Hoorn here, btw.) Another connection I made was to van Merriënboer et al. their "Ten Steps to Complex Learning" or "4 Component Instructional Design". Particularly with regards to doing a skill decomposition (by analyzing experts, the theory, etc.) in order to build a map for how best to learn a complex skill, reducing complexity as much as possible while still remaining true to the authentic learning task; i.e., don't learn certain skills in isolation (drill) unless the easiest version of a task still causes cognitive overload. Because if you learn in isolation too much, your brain misses on the nuances of application in harmony (element interactivity). Related to the concept of "the whole is greater than the sum of its parts". You can master each skill composite individually but still fail epically at combining them into one activity, which is often required.
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Interesting. I suspect it depends on how you use it. Students with a high level of metacognitive capacity could use this to their advantage. Teaching (particularly the Whole-Part-Whole Reteaching technique) is a very useful technique for active recall (don't forget expanding gap spacing and interleaving); it forces you to use all aspects of your cognitive schemas to provide a clear and understandable explanation of what you know to have others understand it. When you struggle to explain it to others or they ask questions and you cannot answer it (or explain it in different ways) you have identified knowledge gaps.These recall techniques serve not only to strengthen the neural connections between concepts in the cognitive schemata (Hebbian plasticity; re-encoding benefits) but, perhaps more importantly, also to identify knowledge gaps making you know what to focus on when improving your knowledge mastery (maybe even what information to drill, depending on the information type).
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Differences between Olympia SGE typewriters
reply to u/ingeniouskeys at https://www.reddit.com/r/typewriters/comments/1e0utt9/differences_between_olympia_sge_typewriters/
The Typewriter Database is going to be one of your better sources, but will require delving into each particular exemplar to see what their owners may have written about them. So, for example, go to https://typewriterdatabase.com/Olympia.SGE40.61.bmys and then click on the individual galleries for all the machines. If you've got an account, you can message those who currently have them and ask questions directly.
Given their manufacture in the late 60s and into the early 70s you're likely to find small incremental improvements in the electrical side, but you're also likely to find more dramatic changes in manufacturing which made them cheaper (replacing metal pieces for flimsier plastic.) I doubt the 45 (later 70s) is going to be incredibly much better than the 40, which I would suspect to be more robust from a manufacturing standpoint. You may have vaguely better "specs", but its build quality is likely going to suffer even more, so you'll have to balance out what you're after.
If you want to delve into the deeper specifics, then try out the repair manuals for them: https://www.lulu.com/shop/ted-munk/the-olympia-sge-304050-typewriter-repair-manual/paperback/product-1e4pnd4v.html?page=1&pageSize=4
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[–]DistributionPure6051[S] comment score below threshold-14 points-13 points-12 points 2 days ago (8 children)Managed to grab it for $40. Don't know the model but I'm hoping to clean it up, replace the ribbon, and resell on eBay for a few bucks permalinkembedsaveparentreportreply[–]chrisaldrichMy typewriter addiction is almost as bad as my card index one 7 points8 points9 points 2 days ago (1 child)If that's your intention, you'd have been much better off getting it for $5-10 to get some margin for your work. If that's your intention, you'd have been much better off getting it for $5-10 to get some margin for your work.formatting helphide helpcontent policysavecancelreddit uses a slightly-customized version of Markdown for formatting. See below for some basics, or check the commenting wiki page for more detailed help and solutions to common issues. you type:you see:*italics*italics**bold**bold[reddit!](https://reddit.com)reddit!* item 1* item 2* item 3item 1item 2item 3> quoted textquoted textLines starting with four spacesare treated like code: if 1 * 2 < 3: print "hello, world!"Lines starting with four spacesare treated like code:if 1 * 2 < 3: print "hello, world!"~~strikethrough~~strikethroughsuper^scriptsuperscriptpermalinkembedsaveparenteditdisable inbox repliesare you sure? yes / nodeleteare you sure? yes / noreply[–]DistributionPure6051[S] comment score below threshold-5 points-4 points-3 points 2 days ago (0 children)They wouldn't go lower than $40 permalinkembedsaveparentreportreply[–]Smubee 2 points3 points4 points 2 days ago (5 children)Don't do this. permalinkembedsaveparentreportreply[–]DistributionPure6051[S] comment score below threshold-6 points-5 points-4 points 1 day ago (4 children)Explain permalinkembedsaveparentreportreply[–]Neilgi 3 points4 points5 points 1 day ago* (3 children)Resellers kind of suck the life out of certain industries and make it difficult for hobbyists to get decent equipment. So long as you sell it for what it is WORTH and not upsell by 100%, then you perhaps aren't one of the bad guys. permalinkembedsaveparentreportreply[–]DistributionPure6051[S] -4 points-3 points-2 points 1 day ago (2 children)I'll take a look at the model and see if I can find its actual worth considering its wear just to try and make a profit. If it ends up actually being $50, oh well, maybe I could send it to a theater or props department in the area permalinkembedsaveparentreportreply[–]Smubee 1 point2 points3 points 1 day ago (1 child)This makes you an asshole. Don't buy shit just to make a profit. You're inflating a market unnecessarily. permalinkembedsaveparentreportreply[–]DistributionPure6051[S] -2 points-1 points0 points 1 day ago (0 children)Then I wasted $50 on a theater prop
Typically in this sub, when people ask, "Is it worth it?" the presumption is that they're buying it to use for themselves. You left out your context of buying it to sell until later. This means that once you've cleaned things up, and go to try to sell it for something above $40, people are going to show up here and ask that same question. When they do, the answer is going to be that it's far too expensive, especially with shipping which is notoriously tricky, expensive, and risky.
You'll be sitting there with a typewriter that you don't care enough about to have known anything about it or if it had any particular value. This also probably means that you don't know enough about what goes into cleaning and properly adjusting a typewriter either. If someone is a sucker enough to pay the crazy mark up, it means that someone who wants to try out a typewriter will be buying a sub-par machine and have a sub-par experience.
unposted reply to u/DistributionPure6051 at https://www.reddit.com/r/typewriters/comments/1dqr02l/is_this_worth_it/<br /> (Most of context is hiding because of downvoting)
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- Jun 2024
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reply to u/virtualellie at https://www.reddit.com/r/typewriters/comments/1ds1aps/typewriter_suggestions_for_newbie/
aggregated links from prior notes:
I'd generally endorse most of the advice on models you'll find in these sources which are geared specifically toward writers, all three sources have lots experience and reasonable bona fides to make such recommendations.
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h9dXflhDed0
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aKMt-aCHZZk
- https://typewriterreview.com/2020/01/10/top-10-writerly-typewriters/
Obviously, you'll want to steer towards the smaller portables in the lists, but most of what's represented should fit your criteria. You'll notice a lot of overlap but with different positioning, so there's obviously some personal preference at play. If there's a nearby shop to you, it may be worth driving over to try out the touch and feel of some machines to see which you like best. Try https://site.xavier.edu/polt/typewriters/tw-repair.html
There was also some sage advice from u/Thylacine33 about purchasing the other day which may be helpful: https://www.reddit.com/r/typewriters/comments/1drj32h/comment/lawb2h7/
Beyond this Just My Typewriter has a few short videos that'll give you a crash course on Typewriter 101: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLJtHauPh529XYHI5QNj5w9PUdi89pOXsS
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reply to u/Rabbits16 at https://www.reddit.com/r/typewriters/comments/1df7o2t/request_type_writer_suggestion_please/
For that budget range, pick up something cleaned and fully serviced from a nearby shop https://site.xavier.edu/polt/typewriters/tw-repair.html
Too many resellers are pushing overpriced machines that say "works" or "may need servicing" on some online shops like ebay or Etsy for top end pricing when you can get something truly spectacular and ready for the next 50 years from a serious pro that needs the support for the same price.
As for particular machines to look at, I can't find much to fault in Joe's advice here https://youtu.be/aKMt-aCHZZk?si=CGPduwA4A3HPDm3u
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Why can Luhmann manage information better than those who typing on obsidian?
Too many people fetishize Luhmann and his system. Yes he wrote a lot and yes he was productive, but was he as influential as any of the thousands upon thousands of writers and academics who used broadly similar methods? A lot of Luhmann's productivity boils down to how one chooses to define productivity. As an example: Isaac Newton, John Locke, Taylor Swift, and even Eminem had broadly similar not taking methods and though their note corpuses are dramatically smaller than Luhmann, their influence on art, culture, and humanity dramatically exceeds that of Luhmann.
I would posit that most serious note takers' productivity boils down to their utter simplicity and easy ability to replicate that method for decades. The largest part of Luhmann's productivity was that he not only had a simple system, but that he was privileged to use and practice at full time for the length of his academic career. (He also didn't face the scourge of peer-review that most academics are forced to run today.)
As an example of someone whose methods were very similar to Luhmann's, but who was dramatically more productive (from a generic definition of it), take a look at S. D. Goitein who wrote out about 1/3 the number of slips that Luhmann did, but used them to write almost a 1/3 more articles and books! Luhmann: 90,000 slips, 550 articles, 50 books versus Goitein: 27,000 slips, 669 articles, 69 books. Interestingly Goitein's method of organization was much closer to the topical organization to the vast majority of zettelkasten/card index users (as well as Obsidian users) than to Luhmann's alpha-numeric organizational method. There isn't nearly enough scale in (psychology, cognitive psychology) research to reasonably compare analog versus digital methods, much less enough research to distinguish between methods at the scale of individual people. Everyone will respond differently to different modalities because the breadth of neurodiversity within the population. The psychology research you're citing is painfully, painfully thin and is far from reaching the level of replicability. As a result, the best practicable advice to any individual is to experiment for themselves and choose the method they feel works best for them from a sustainability perspective.
reply to u/Quack_quack_22 at https://www.reddit.com/r/ObsidianMD/comments/1doqgar/why_can_luhmann_manage_information_better_than/
I found that Luhmann's information management system is not more complicated, but it is more effective than the influencers talking about taking notes on Obsidian. Because he took notes by hand:
Studies show that taking notes by hand has a positive impact on many different brain areas. Writing by hand is slower than typing: The slowness of handwriting helps Luhmann consider and select important words to write in literature notes. -> he will remember better the brain is relaxed -> the brain is more creative: when writing literature notes -> he will come up with more ideas so he can write permanent notes. To put it more simply. Luhmann takes notes to find as many ideas as possible to write in permanent notes, then these permanent notes will become a complete essay after Luhmann connects them together. And writing citations, summaries of content and citing sources in literature are just proof that his ideas are correct (ironically, people who make content about obsidian (also Tiago Forte) just encourage copy-paste).
Thus, copying highlights from Kindle to Obsidian becomes useless if you don't understand anything about highlights and don't get any ideas from them. I don't claim that typing makes us stupid, because people who write on computers have a habit of carefully correcting spelling and arguments, which helps them think more deeply = more smart.
Sources: https://www.forbes.com/sites/nancyolson/2016/05/15/three-ways-that-writing-with-a-pen-positively-affects-your-brain/ https://www.psychiatrist.com/news/handwriting-shows-unexpected-benefits-over-typing/
P/s: I think this guy is very precise about the zettelkasten method: he takes notes on paper like Luhmann to get ideas, then he just starts copying them into Obsidian. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FrvKHFIHaeQ&t=0s)
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I dont know if im hitting too hard or not. ( second image is the backup paper behind the actual one)
If you've got heavy impressions going to the level of the backing sheet or things like your period cutting holes directly through your paper, then it's not really so much an issue of typing too hard, but your carriage is slightly out of alignment with respect to your type bars.
Your typeface shouldn't actually hit the platen when pressed (or held forward), but should just kiss the ribbon which then places the imprint onto the paper. Holding your typeslug forward against the type guide you should have just enough space to slip a piece of paper between your slug and the platen. If there isn't a tiny bit of space, your typeface will chew up your ribbon and paper over time. The typing thunk sound that typewriters make isn't the slug hitting the platen (aka cylinder), but the typebar hitting the anvil (aka ring).
The proper adjustment for fixing this is thus commonly called a ring and cylinder adjustment and how it's effected depends on whether you have a segment shift or a carriage shift machine. On many machines it requires adjusting two screws on either side of the machine. It changes the distance of platen from typeface and can prevent your making holes in the paper and/or ribbon, which isn't good. Sometimes using a simple backing sheet can remedy a bit of this distance problem, especially on platens which have hardened or shrunk slightly over time. Searching YouTube for your make/model (or similar models) will usually show you the adjustment you'll need to make to remedy these problems.
See also: https://hypothes.is/a/AegRziHnEe-Ud_stVcPQLA
Reply to u/Bitter_Rent_141 at https://www.reddit.com/r/typewriters/comments/1dnnh2n/is_this_normal/
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This might be a weird question, but does anyone keep memes in your ZK? I'm realizing I download a lot of memes that I particularly appreciate -- but then I usually can't fnd them again if I want them. Anyone have a method for this?
I only have a few very specific memes indexed in my box: https://boffosocko.com/tag/zettelkasten-memes/ and a few more at https://hypothes.is/users/chrisaldrich?q=zettelkasten+meme
Historically, Aby Warburg had a large image-based zettelkasten for his work on art which predated Richard Dawkins' conception of meme, but I think qualifies. See: https://boffosocko.com/tag/aby-warburg/ or his Bilderatlas Mnemosyne project: https://warburg.sas.ac.uk/archive/bilderatlas-mnemosyne
It's digital in nature, but Shawn Gilmore has a large collection of images of string walls, Anacapa charts, walls and floors littered with paperwork by obsessives, etc. for his cultural research. It also includes some popular memes. https://www.vaultofculture.com/nst
replyy to u/a2jc4life at https://www.reddit.com/r/Zettelkasten/comments/1ddhn9n/memes/
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Success histories? 4 years into Zettelkasten and not being fruitful
Let's turn your question around: What exactly are you hoping to get out of it for yourself? Do you have specific goals for your own use?
You may like the idea of having and using a hammer, but if you don't have a project that requires a hammer, then owning and trying to hammer on random things in an unfocused way is probably not the right tool for your needs.
reply to u/arealnamestakenreal at https://www.reddit.com/r/Zettelkasten/comments/1dko10r/success_histories_4_years_into_zettelkasten_and/
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Excellent video. I do have to mention that Germane Load is an old concept. In the newer model it is called Optimized Intrinsic Cognitive Load -> Working Memory devoted to the creation or automation of cognitive schemata.
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Removing rust from typewriters
Steel wool can be useful for removing rust from keylevers and other parts on typewriters, but can leave dust/slag behind which can be a bear to clean up especially when used on typebars.
De-rusters like Evaporust can be useful, but should be tested against causing harm to other parts of a machine. Some rust removal chemicals can strip galvanization from machine parts. Olympia typewriters in particular are infamous for galvanized steel parts.
Another option can be to use a rotary tool (like a Dremel) with a wire brush head to remove rust.
Take care and be sure to use proper eye protection against dirt, dust, and chemicals when doing this sort of work. Also make sure you have proper ventilation and/or a mask to avoid breathing in dust and toxic chemicals.
Richard Polt's site has additional resources for typewriter restoration: https://site.xavier.edu/polt/typewriters/tw-restoration.html
Reply to https://www.reddit.com/r/typewriters/comments/1da2zg6/how_do_i_remove_rust/
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Not sure if it may help your Typewriter Typefaces Bible project or not, but I'll mention that Marcin Wichary used the Internet Archive to collect a lot of the materials for his massive 3 volume 2023 book "Shift Happens: A Book About Keyboards": https://archive.org/details/wicharytypewriter
In addition to lots of material which he found and collected on the Archive, he added a huge number of resources, catalogs, and books which are either rare or incredibly difficult to find by uploading them to the Archive for others to potentially find and use. You and others may find it valuable and or useful to follow his pattern of uploading and storage there.
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Also are the key caps supposed to be that yellow or is that from cigarettes.
For yellowed glass keys on typewriters, there's usually a key top covered by a piece of paper with the key glyph on it which is sandwiched in with a small piece of glass and a metal ring that holds it down with several metal tabs underneath the key to hold it all in place. There are custom keyring pliers for quickly removing and replacing the papers which needs care not to crack the glass. Otherwise you can manually bend the metal tabs on all your key rings to remove them and replace the papers. (This is generally a LOT of work either way.) See: https://www.reddit.com/r/typewriters/comments/1csni4d/neat_find_on_clients_kmg/
I prefer the yellowed patina of the older key papers, so I tend to leave them versus spending the time and effort to replace them.
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I’ve currently only fixed the platen and reconnected the space bar. Issue I’m having is the letters are really faint and cut off almost half way through.
Often after you resurface a platen, it slightly changes the configuration of the platen with respect to the typeface. As a result one usually may need to do three adjustments in a specific order to get things to align properly again. These can definitely be done at home with some patience.
Usually the order for tweaking is: * Ring and Cylinder adjustment (distance of platen from typeface; the type shouldn't touch the platen or you'll find you're imprinting on your paper, making holes in the paper and/or ribbon, which isn't good). Sometimes using a simple backing sheet can remedy a bit of this distance problem, especially on platens which have hardened or shrunk slightly over time. * On Feet adjustment (vertical adjustment so that letters are bright and clear and neither top or bottom of characters are too light/faint) * Motion adjustment (the lower and upper case letters are at the same level with respect to each other) You can search YouTube videos for your model (or related models) and these words which may uncover someone doing a similar repair, so you have a better idea of what you're doing and where to make the adjustments.
Here's Joe Van Cleave describing some of it in one of his early videos: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C0AozF2Jfo0 The general principles for most typewriters are roughly the same with slight variations depending on whether your machine is a segment shift or a carriage shift. You should roughly be able to puzzle out which screws to adjust on your particular model to get the general outcome you want.
Related blogposts: * https://munk.org/typecast/2022/01/23/adjusting-ring-cylinder-on-a-brother-jp-1/<br /> * https://munk.org/typecast/2013/07/30/typewriter-repair-101-adjusting-vertical-typeface-alignment-segmentbasket-shift-typewriters/
You might find a related repair manual for your machine with more detail and diagrams for these adjustments via the Typewriter Database or on Richard Polt's typewriter site.
For those not mechanically inclined you may be better off taking it onto a repair shop for a quick adjustment. https://site.xavier.edu/polt/typewriters/tw-repair.html
Reply to u/Acethease at https://www.reddit.com/r/typewriters/comments/1d76ygx/got_a_as_a_gift_corona_3_recentlyish_and_i_need/
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- May 2024
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To be more specific on solvents for beginners, potentially try mineral spirits (white spirit in UK), paint thinner, naphtha (lighter fluid), kerosene, varnish remover, PB B'laster, or carburetor or brake cleaner. Be careful as many of these are flammable and some can remove paint or decals; use all of them in a well ventilated area. You may see some recommend household variations of alcohol, but these do contain water and generally aren't very effective solvents for the types of oil/grease/dust you'll probably want to remove; professional typewriter repair shops would not use alcohol on a machine. And for those in the back, no one but a psychopath would use WD-40 on a machine's internals.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xjumGF9NFE8 is a pretty solid cleaning primer. Searching YouTube will uncover some potential additional advice in addition to what you can find at https://site.xavier.edu/polt/typewriters/tw-restoration.html
Good luck. That's a lovely machine!
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Everyone mentioned most of the usual tricks, but one.
To get your sticky typewriter keys working again, while you're flushing out the segment with your solvent of choice (lacquer thinner, paint thinner, mineral spirits, alcohol, etc.), actually move the typebars using the keys or by other means. This will help to get them moving and allow the solvent and subsequently compressed air to help flush the oil, dust, hair, etc. out of your machine. You've already got a mechanical cleaning device of sorts (the typebar itself) inside the segment, so move it while you're flushing it out!
It may take a few repeated treatments/attempts to get it all clear for all the keys, but it's far easier than taking everything apart.
reply to u/nogaesallowed at https://www.reddit.com/r/typewriters/comments/1cp75ln/how_do_you_clean_a_1mm_gap/
People were recommending all sorts of ideas and solvents here, including folded card stock, tooth brushes, floss, toothpicks, interdental brushes, wood cuticle sticks, Swiss Army knife tweezers, microbrushes, and even an ultrasonic cleaner.
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Matthew van der Hoorn Yes totally agree but could be used for creating a draft to work with, that's always the angle I try to take buy hear what you are saying Matthew!
Reply to Nidhi Sachdeva: Nidhi Sachdeva, PhD Just went through the micro-lesson itself. In the context of teachers using to generate instruction examples, I do not argue against that. The teacher does not have to learn the content, or so I hope.
However, I would argue that the learners themselves should try to come up with examples or analogies, etc. But this depends on the learner's learning skills, which should be taught in schools in the first place.
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***Deep Processing***-> It's important in learning. It's when our brain constructs meaning and says, "Ah, I get it, this makes sense." -> It's when new knowledge establishes connections to your pre-existing knowledge.-> When done well, It's what makes the knowledge easily retrievable when you need it. How do we achieve deep processing in learning? 👉🏽 STORIES, EXPLANATIONS, EXAMPLES, ANALOGIES and more - they all promote deep meaningful processing. 🤔BUT, it's not always easy to come up with stories and examples. It's also time-consuming. You can ask you AI buddies to help with that. We have it now, let's leverage it. Here's a microlesson developed on 7taps Microlearning about this topic.
Reply to Nidhi Sachdeva: I agree mostly, but I would advice against using AI for this. If your brain is not doing the work (the AI is coming up with the story/analogy) it is much less effective. Dr. Sönke Ahrens already said: "He who does the effort, does the learning."
I would bet that Cognitive Load Theory also would show that there is much less optimized intrinsic cognitive load (load stemming from the building or automation of cognitive schemas) when another person, or the AI, is thinking of the analogies.
https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7199396764536221698/
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Matthew van der Hoorn I agree. However, one of the first things I learned as a student teacher many moons ago was just because I am teaching does not mean anyone is learning. Whole - part - whole, cooperative, Kolb's cycle, etc are simply teaching tools to be used with varying levels of skill.My application of this to the L&D world was making the point that many don't have any understanding of andragogy before embarking on a (often second) career.
Alan Clark True. As Dr. Sönke Ahrens says, "The one who does the effort does the learning."
What goes on in the mind is how learning happens, it is the learner that must do the learning.
I think what you mean is that when YOU are teaching, it does not mean OTHERS are learning.
What I meant was that when the LEARNER is doing the teaching, HE consolidates his own learning.
Link for Hypothes.is context: https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7197621782743252992/?commentUrn=urn:li:comment:(activity:7197621782743252992,7198233333577699328)&dashCommentUrn=urn:li:fsd_comment:(7198233333577699328,urn:li:activity:7197621782743252992)
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Alan Clark Agreed...also; learning = change in behaviour, is another widely held belief.
Reply to John Whitfield: I think that one is mostly a semantic issue. In some definitions of learning, learning does equate to a change in behavior. In parenting for example, how is learning measured? If the behavior is changed. Therefore, for parenting, learning is a change in behavior.
I'd argue for many books the same is true, what is the use of a book if the knowledge is only in your head. Application, thus changing one's behavior, is essential for the proper use. Obviously this is not for everything the case, but I am highlighting a few scenarios where it would be accurate to say that learning is a change in behavior.
Nothing is ever black and white, it is quite simplistic to say such things, often there is a lot of nuance going on.
Link for Hypothes.is context: https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7197621782743252992/?commentUrn=urn:li:comment:(activity:7197621782743252992,7198233333577699328)&dashCommentUrn=urn:li:fsd_comment:(7198233333577699328,urn:li:activity:7197621782743252992)
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That teaching = learning. A widely held belief in L&D.
Reply to Alan Clark: Alan Clark Perhaps teaching is not learning, but teaching is an excellent way of consolidating and verifying knowledge. Depending on how one does it, the teaching improves both comprehension and retention. See, for example, the whole-part-whole reteaching method that Dr Justin Sung teaches in the advanced parts of the iCanStudy course.
Link for Hypothes.is context: https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7197621782743252992/?commentUrn=urn:li:comment:(activity:7197621782743252992,7198233333577699328)&dashCommentUrn=urn:li:fsd_comment:(7198233333577699328,urn:li:activity:7197621782743252992)
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Congratulations on that beautiful machine!
Don't listen to the nay-sayers who likely have very different priorities and esthetics. If this is your machine, and you love it, then "own it".
It does look like a standard (as opposed to portable) typewriter. (Standards are often better and more robust typers due to their size and design.) Likely a Model 1 or Model 2, but I don't have specific knowledge beyond a cursory glance at the typewriter database. You can start by looking at examples of machine types and bodies at https://typewriterdatabase.com/smithcorona.86.typewriter-serial-number-database.
From there, the Model 1 says "Electric Serial Numbers Concurrent with Standard", so scroll down the page and see if you can identify a year based on a serial number you should be able to find underneath the hood. You can try https://typewriterdatabase.com/Smith+Corona.Standard.86.bmys, but I don't see any later models there, so perhaps no one has documented one before and you could be the first.
Then start with Richard Polt's site https://site.xavier.edu/polt/typewriters/ where you may likely find a manual and if you're lucky a repair manual. Surely there will be a few manuals for similar 50s standard S-C manual typewriters which should at least get you started. His site has a wealth of other information to give you pointers. His book The Typewriter Revolution (2015) has good intro chapters on cleaning, basic repair, and restoration. YouTube may have some useful videos as well. The typewriter database will have some later model S-C electric machines which you might try searching for on YouTube as well and it's highly likely that the design changes weren't so drastic that those may help you significantly.
For basic cleaning, try https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xjumGF9NFE8 which has some solid advice. Obviously take care with respect to getting the electrical portion of your machine wet.
I've not done any electric machines before, but if I recall, I seem to have read/heard (maybe from Tom Hanks who I know has a 50s electric Smith-Corona) that the early electrics only went as far as doing power for the keys, so it should be reasonably repairable if it doesn't work out of the box.
I'm sure you'll love it. With any luck, you'll also get some serious enjoyment and sense of accomplishment out of cleaning it up. If nothing else, it'll give you a wealth of experience in making the attempt and you can apply that to other machines if you continue collecting and typing. Some of my first machines weren't immediate "successes" until after I'd been able to tinker with others and was able to come back to them with a more experienced hand.
Have fun with it!
reply to https://www.reddit.com/r/typewriters/comments/1cuzy04/please_can_someone_identify_this/
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Blank tabbed 4x6 cards (self.Zettelkasten)submitted 1 day ago by SpacePatricianTrust me when I say this query is Zettelkasten-related. I've adopted the Voroscope method of organizing as per the Encyclopedia Propaedia, but it involves creating a lot of tab cards. I could make things go faster if I had white, blank, unruled tabbed index cards that I could set up a printer template for, but there don't seem to be any on the market in bulk. Any ideas of where I could find them off the beaten path?
I've looked and looked for such a template and printer method to no avail myself. Your best bet here is probably either Avery Multi-use labels (maybe 5418 or 5428 depending on your card tabs) which have templates you can print a sheet at a time, or buying a labeler like the Brother P-touch which has a variety of different colored labels available. A third method is to line up multiple tabbed cards in your typewriter and do 3-4 at a time.
Tabbed cards are significantly more expensive than standard index cards, so if you're all in on this, I'd recommend contacting one of the manufacturers directly and buying in bulk to drive the price down. Alibaba can also be your friend here for a bulk order too. Last year I got a bulk order of 15,000 4x6" index cards for well under $0.005 per card, while the current going rate on Amazon or most office supply stores is $0.02 - $0.03/card.
Let me know if you find someone manufacturing inexpensive tabbed dividers in 1/5, 1/6, 1/7, or even 1/8 cut tabs. I'd love to buy a couple thousand of these in bulk as well.
Knowing the extra work involved in this method, I HIGHLY recommend you try it out by hand for a bit to see if it's something you'll do for more than a few months before going all-in. I've read some of Joseph Voros' work, which I understood to be theoretical only. Did he ever fully implement it himself? Before you try, you might want to read up on others' earlier work like that of Paul Otlet, Mortimer J. Adler, et al. Many here will lionize Luhmann's method, but recall that S. D. Goitein managed to take a 1/3 of the notes that Luhmann did while creating a published output a 1/3 larger than Luhmann all while using a method similar to that of Adler and company which is also very close to the method recommended by almost all academics from Jacques Barzun to Umberto Eco.
Definitely think about what you're hoping to accomplish before going straight down the rabbit hole too far.
If you do go all-in, then buying a big storage box upfront can save you a lot of time and expense, try https://boffosocko.com/2022/12/26/the-ultimate-guide-to-zettelkasten-index-card-storage/ for some ideas. My daily driver now is a 60,000+ card index from Steelcase that I picked up on the used market for $125.
LIFE. “The 102 Great Ideas: Scholars Complete a Monumental Catalog.” January 26, 1948.
Eco, Umberto. How to Write a Thesis. Translated by Caterina Mongiat Farina and Geoff Farina. 1977. Reprint, Cambridge, MA, USA: MIT Press, 2015.
Barzun, Jacques, and Henry F. Graff. The Modern Researcher. 6th ed. Belmont, CA: Thomson/Wadsworth, 2004.
Reply to u/SpacePatrician at https://www.reddit.com/r/Zettelkasten/comments/1ctsu78/blank_tabbed_4x6_cards/
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- Apr 2024
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Replacing the key cap [as a means of switching from QWERTZ to QWERTY] isn't going to help at all, it's just a label. You'd have to swap out internal parts too. Depending on the model, you'd either have to remove and swap typebars or remove the head off the typebar and resolder it onto the appropriate alternate (and ensure that it's properly aligned, not an easy task). Then you'd have to swap the key caps (labels). It's definitely a mechanically doable process, but it's probably almost never done in practice. Doing it as a newbie probably isn't recommendable; you're better off having a repair shop do it for you if you decide to go this route. Depending on the keyboard/model, you'd also have to deal with accents, umlauts, etc.
Given the difficulty (or cost) of the process and the potential end results, you're assuredly better off locating a QWERTY machine and paying a bit more for shipping to your area if necessary.
Your mileage may vary depending on model.
reply to u/imprisoningmymemory at https://www.reddit.com/r/typewriters/comments/1cg1avp/replacing_keys/
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Typewriter Correction
If you go the white out fluid route, there are some bottles that use mini-sponges versus the old brush-types which are easier to apply. If you're worried about dripping on/in your machine with fluid, there's now also a variety of small handheld dispensers of white out tape which allow some incredibly precise use at the level of individual letters. Scroll the paper up a line or two, white it out, scroll back down and be on your way. (I only do this for things approaching mission critical applications; generally I just x things out or overtype and continue.)
My typing technique has gotten better using a typewriter versus computer keyboard.
reply to u/AlexInRV at https://www.reddit.com/r/typewriters/comments/1cc6oci/typewriter_correction/
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So, how do you actually transfer a book with a systematic theory into your ZK/Evergreen notes?
reply to u/judugrovee at https://www.reddit.com/r/Zettelkasten/comments/1cb1s8j/so_how_do_you_actually_transfer_a_book_with_a/
Others here have written some good advice about the note taking portions, but perhaps some of your issue is with your reading method. To reframe this, I recommend you take a look at How to Read a Book: The Classical Guide to Intelligent Reading (Touchstone, 2011) by Mortimer J. Adler and Charles Van Doren and Adler's earlier article “How to Mark a Book" (Saturday Review of Literature, July 6, 1940. https://www.unz.com/print/SaturdayRev-1940jul06-00011/)
The careful reader will notice that they recommend a lot of the same sorts of note making and annotation practices as Ahrens does (and by extension Luhmann), though their notes are being written in the margins and in the front and back pages of the book. On the reading front, you may be conflating some of the reading/understanding/learning work with the note taking and sense making portions. If instead, you do a quick inspectional read followed by a read through prior to doing a more analytical read you'll find that you have a stronger understanding of the material conceptually. Some of the material you took expansive notes on before will likely seem basic and not require the sorts of permanent notes you've been making. Your cognitive load will have been lessened and you'll instead spend more productive time making fewer, but more useful permanent notes in the end.
On the first reads through, reframe your work as coming to a general understanding of what is going on while you're creating a quick-and-dirty personal index of what is interesting in the work. On subsequent focus, you can hone in on the most important pieces of what the author is saying with respect to your own interests and work. It's here that the dovetailing of good reading method and good note making method will shine for you, and importantly help cut down on what may seem like busywork.
It's not often discussed in some of the ZK space, but reading method can be even more important than note taking method. And at the end of the day, your particular needs and regular practice (practice, and more practice) will eventually help hone your work into something more valuable to you over time. Eventually you'll more quickly rise to the level of what C. Wright Mills called "intellectual craftsmanship" (1952).
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reply to u/bastugubbar at https://www.reddit.com/r/typewriters/comments/1ca8nwk/i_for_one_welcome_our_new_taylor_swift_overlords/
Let's be honest here, the most recent typewriter reference (presumably to that of an ex-boyfriend) is certainly not her first. I'm a modest Swiftie at best (from a trivia perspective), preferring to think of her work as poetry rather than musical pop-culture, so I imagine her more as a quill pen sort of writer, though my notes indicate she does take some of her notes for composition using her cell phone.
This being said, a few years back she did feature a red Sears Cutlass in All Too Well (10 Minute Version) (Taylor's Version) at the 8:28 mark, which hasn't driven the cost of these through the roof, though I have seen one listed for $1,000 (it unsurprisingly didn't sell for that.) For more here see Robert Messenger at OzTypewriter and Ryan Schocket for Buzzfeed. It's not listed anymore, but this past Christmas, she also had a red typewriter Christmas tree ornament in her online store.
Those who were privileged to attend the recent Eras Tour (or see it on Disney+) saw groups of typewriters in the background during several songs.
She's been featuring typewriters for a bit now and it hasn't driven prices through the roof any more than the typewriter renaissance that's been going on for the last few years or so. I suspect that this new round of references isn't going to shift things significantly.
If she does go full-typewriter, which model(s) do you suspect she'd be using amidst the pantheon of other writers? I'd suggest she may be romantic enough to do a late 40's Smith-Corona Clipper... or perhaps while jet-setting a Skyriter?
Type on!
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KWoCurr 1 point2 points3 points 5 hours ago (0 children)I actually do use Dewey!
I'm with you on some of this, but let me play devil's advocate for a moment, so that we might hew closer to the question u/atomicnotes has posed:
If a Dewey Decimal Number is equivalent to a topic heading or subject, then what is the difference between using these subject/category/tag headings and forgoing the work of translating into a DC number (a task which is far less straightforward for those without a library science). If there is a onto to one and onto correspondence there should mathematically be no difference.
And how does one treat insightful material on geometry (516), for example, which comes from a book classified about political science (320-329)?
In a similar vein, why not use Otlet's Universal Decimal Classification which more easily allows for the admixture of topics as well as time periods?
Separately, I'll echo your valuable statement:
"I think everyone stumbles into a system of their own. I suspect the best practice here is the one that works for you!"
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scihuy 0 points1 point2 points 2 hours ago (1 child)Hi, Can you point out any articles on note-taking in the sciences as opposed to history or social sciences? Any pointers would be very helpful
reply to u/scihuy at https://www.reddit.com/r/Zettelkasten/comments/1c2b2d6/note_taking_in_the_past/kzcg3qa/
I posed your question to my own card index:
Generally scientists haven't spent the time to talk about their methods the way those in the social sciences and humanities are apt to do. This being said, their methods are unsurprisingly all the same.
If you want to look up examples, you can delve into the nachlass (digitized or not) of most of the famous scientists and mathematicians out there to verify this. Ramon Llull certainly wrote, but broadly memorized all of his work; Newton had his wastebooks; Leibnitz used Thomas Harrison's Ark of Studies cabinet; Carl Linnaeus "invented" index cards for his work (search for the work of Staffan Müller-Wille and Isabelle Charmantier); Erasmus Darwin and Charles Darwin both used commonplace books; physicist Mario Bunge had a significant zettelkasten practice; Richard Feynman used notebooks; engineer Ross Ashby used a combination of notebooks which he indexed using a card index.
For historical reasons, most used a commonplace book method in which they indexed against keywords rather than Luhmann's variation, but broadly the results are the same either way.
Computer scientist Gerald Weinberg is one of the few I'm aware of within the sciences who's written a note taking manual, but again, his method is broadly the same as that described by other writers for centuries:
Weinberg, Gerald M. Weinberg on Writing: The Fieldstone Method. New York, N.Y: Dorset House, 2005.
I identify as both a mathematician and an engineer, and I have a paper-based zettelkasten for these areas, primarily as I prefer writing out equations versus attempting to write everything out as LaTeX. I'm sure others here could add their experiences as well. I've previously written about zettelkasten from the framing of set theory, topology, dense sets, and have even touched on it with respect to the ideas of equivalence classes and category theory, though I haven't published much in depth here as most don't have the mathematical sophistication to appreciate the structures and analogies.
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- Mar 2024
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start.digitalfitness.com start.digitalfitness.com
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Hi Muhammed, Thank you so much for the workshop friday. It was Nice to hear others geek out and talk about the Zettelkasten principle and with interactive exercises it was wonderful. I have done my PhD with inspiration in Luhmann’s system for knowledge creation so I am quite familiar with it. Still I have a question for you that I am sad I didn’t get around to discuss with you in person at the summit. Instead I thought I could ask it here and hope you would still see it. Are you doing your Zettelkasten in obsidian - and if so why do you still number them? Best Agnes
/reply at Digital Fitness in response to Agnes Lausen about folgezettel
Hey Agnes, thanks a lot for attending. I rlly loved the energy and loved doing the workshop. As to your question, yes I do use obsidian for my zettelkasten. As to the numbering, it gives me a few benefits. Firstly, it forces me to make a link. If I am going to import a new note, I will have to link the note to another note, because I have to give an ID (number). This prevents orphan notes. And, it gives me a visual sense of what is going on in my zettelkasten. I can see at a glance if a section has more notes than others (my section 4, for example, has more notes.) Both the ID and the statement title, for me, gives me so much context just seeing the title without looking at the contents.
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You need to understand and learn the basic ideas, from scratch.ZK is a lifetime job.
reply to u/Aponogetone at https://www.reddit.com/r/Zettelkasten/comments/1bideq7/comment/kvjwhzf/?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=web2x&context=3
I'm not 100% sure I understand your first point from a contextual perspective. What are you trying to get across here with this comment? Generally I tend to learn and understand the basic ideas of a text on my initial inspectional read. Often these are so basic as to not require any real note making at all. The second, more analytic read of the material usually clarifies anything missing and this is typically where I create some of my most valuable notes.
While I philosophically appreciate your second point, and over time it can build some intriguing insights, one should remember, that like many systems, it's only a tool and is thus useful for the timespan and project(s) for which that tool is fit for purpose. Holding onto ideas like this too tightly don't allow enough space for future creativity and flexibility. The executives at the buggy whip factory also felt that theirs was a lifetime job once.
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in literature notes, do you write all of the stuff from a single article/book/whatever in one note, or do you split them all into individual notes of their own, one little piece on each card/note?
reply to u/oursong at https://www.reddit.com/r/Zettelkasten/comments/1bideq7/literature_notes_question/
My bibliographic/literature notes are my personal (brief) index of what I found interesting in the book. I can always revisit most of what the book contained by reviewing over it. When done I excerpt the most important and actionable items on their own cards with a reference back to the book and page/loc number. Depending on my needs I may revisit at later dates and excerpt other pieces from my indexed items if it turns out I need them.
From an efficiency perspective, I find that it seems like a waste of time to split out hundreds of lower-level ideas when I may only need the best for my work.
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How to start a commonplace book .t3_1bfu16h._2FCtq-QzlfuN-SwVMUZMM3 { --postTitle-VisitedLinkColor: #edeeef; --postTitleLink-VisitedLinkColor: #6f7071; --postBodyLink-VisitedLinkColor: #6f7071; }
Colleen Kennedy has a nice primer: https://www.academia.edu/35101285/Creating_a_Commonplace_Book_CPB_
It may also help to have an indexing method so you can find things later. John Locke's method is one of the oldest and most compact, though if you plan on doing this for a while, having a separate book for your index can be helpful. You can also create your index using index cards the way that Ross Ashby did; see: https://ashby.info/index.html
For John Locke's method try: - https://archive.org/details/gu_newmethodmaki00lock - https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/john-lockes-method-for-common-place-books-1685/
If you're into history, development, and examples of how people did this in the past, Earl Haven's has an excellent short book:<br /> Havens, Earle. Commonplace Books: A History of Manuscripts and Printed Books from Antiquity to the Twentieth Century. New Haven, CT: Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, 2001. https://www.oakknoll.com/pages/books/99718/earle-havens/commonplace-books-a-history-of-manuscripts-and-printed-books-from-antiquity-to-the-twentieth
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- Feb 2024
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Let's reframe things here in part because it's highly illustrative of both the phrases as well as the specific question you raise.
Imagine Andy Matuschak reading Sonke Ahrens' How to Make Smart Notes (CreateSpace, 2017) and making notes on what he feels is important. As he reads, he does what is prescribed, namely, he restates the idea in his own words based on what he's read. In doing this he takes the idea of "evergreen" content from journalism settings (and later SEO settings) which he was familiar with and applies that name to what Ahrens called permanent notes to expound on his understanding of Ahrens! (An evergreen article in newspaper work is an article which was written for a particular recurring holiday, event, or story and is regular. Why spend huge amounts of staff time writing that truly original Valentine's day article? The broad stories about gifts to give and restaurants to visit really don't change from year to year. Just dust it off and reprint it, as readers are unlikely to have saved or remembered it and it becomes free re-purposable content.)
Of course, in rewriting this definition, Matuschak adds in some additional baggage for those who aren't carefully reading his work. He adds some additional emphasis on revisiting one's ideas and rewriting them over time, which is certainly fine, but I think the novice note maker puts too much emphasis on this portion thinking that each permanent or evergreen note must eventually become polished to perfection. In practice, most seasoned writers don't and won't do this. In fact, I suspect if you looked at Matuschak's note on evergreen notes, you'd find that it probably hasn't changed since the day he wrote it other than agglutinating links from other notes.
This doesn't mean that one can't modify or change their ideas over time, this is certainly useful and good, but I suspect that the majority aren't doing it the way that might be imagined by Matuschak's original statement or the way that his idea was picked up by the (niche) digital gardening community and spread primarily in the work of Maggie Appleton. It's some of this evolution of Matuschak's definition which bled into digital gardens, which have some overlap with zettelkasten and the note taking realms, which have muddied the waters. As a result, one should take it as general advice and apply it to their own situation, needs, and practice.
For those who use their own notes for writing, one will often mark their cards/notes to indicate that they've used those ideas in various projects so that they're not actively repeating themselves ad nauseum. Some of the additional tweaks one might make to their notes from a style or context specific perspective are also left to the editing portion rather than being done in the notes themselves. As a result of some of this, unless there is a dramatic flaw in a note, there isn't generally a lot of additional work one would come back to it to revise it. If it does require that sort of major revision, then perhaps the better method would be to make a new note and linking it to the original along with an explanation of the error. I typically wouldn't recommend polishing individual notes to some Plationic idea of perfection. Doing so is often just make-work which distracts from one's time which could be better spent doing additional reading or actual thinking. If you're going to do that sort of polishing work, do it at the end when you've got a longer piece of writing you're including your note in.
The real question now, is how are you personally going to define permanent notes, evergreen notes, or other related phrases like atomic notes? This practice is called by Mortimer J. Adler and Charles Van Doren "coming to terms" with an author's work and is part of their analysis for how one should read a book to get the most out of it. I highly recommend reading How to Read a Book (Simon & Schuster, 1972 or Touchstone, 2011) as a companion to any of the usual note taking manuals.
If you want to continue the experiment on a better unified definition of permanent notes, evergreen notes, atomic notes, etc., you can find a pretty solid bibliography of note making, writing, and reading manuals to peruse at https://boffosocko.com/2024/01/18/note-taking-and-knowledge-management-resources-for-students/#Recommended%20reading.
While one could certainly go down the rabbit hole of reading all these resources, I would recommend only looking at one or two and spending your time working on actual practice. It's through practice that you're more likely to make actual progress on your own problems and questions.
reply to u/franrodalg at https://www.reddit.com/r/Zettelkasten/comments/1azoo9m/permanent_vs_evergreen_notes_am_i_thinking_about/
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If you're into music producers and creativity, Brian Eno and his collaborator Peter Schmidt created and sold a custom "zettelkasten" called "Oblique Strategies" which Eno frequently used in the recording studio during live sessions when he hit creative walls. There are various digital versions of his card set online for playing around with in your own creative work.
Thanks for this mini-review. I've had Rubin in my reading pile for a while, specifically to see what he says with respect to the idea of combinatorial creativity. Perhaps it's time to bump him up the list?
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Your zettelkasten, having a perfect memory of your "past self" acts as a ratchet so that when you have a new conversation on a particular topic, your "present self" can quickly remember where you left off and not only advance the arguments but leave an associative trail for your "future self" to continue on again later.
Many thoughts and associations occur when you're having conversations with any text, whether it's with something you're reading by another author or your own notes in your zettelkasten or commonplace book. For more conversations on this topic, perhaps thumb through: https://hypothes.is/users/chrisaldrich?q=tag%3A%27conversations+with+the+text%27
If you view conversations broadly as means of finding and collecting information from external sources and naturally associating them together, perhaps you'll appreciate this quote:
No piece of information is superior to any other. Power lies in having them all on file and then finding the connections. There are always connections; you have only to want to find them.—Umberto Eco in Foucault's Pendulum (Secker & Warburg)
(Reply to u/u/Plastic-Lettuce-7150 at https://www.reddit.com/r/Zettelkasten/comments/1ae2qf4/communicating_with_a_zettelkasten/)
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- Jan 2024
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It's original purpose was definitely to create unique output but you can definitely use it for other reasons!
reply to u/chasemac_ at https://www.reddit.com/r/Zettelkasten/comments/19ep9rc/comment/kjempeu/
I'm curious from where you draw your "original purpose" claim? This presupposes having identified a zettelkasten progenitor who has clearly made such a statement. (If you're thinking Luhmann, you're missing the mark by centuries. And even if you're thinking Luhmann, where did he say this specifically?) While Konrad Gessner seems to have been an early progenitor in 1548, the broader idea goes much further back. Even in the early days of the commonplace book, the primary analogy was using them as "storehouses" for collecting treasure (thesaurus) aka knowledge or wisdom.
Even Luhmann's framing of his zettelkasten as his "second memory" was old by the time he wrote it:
In a short academic dissertation on the art of excerpts, Andreas Stübel described the card index as a ‘secondary and subsidiary memory’ (‘memoria secundaria and subsidiaria’), summing up in just three words the dilemma scholars had been struggling with for two centuries with respect to the use of commonplace books. As far as I know, Stübel was the first among contemporaries to speak of secondary memory. —Alberto Cevolini in “Where Does Niklas Luhmann’s Card Index Come From?” Erudition and the Republic of Letters 3, no. 4 (October 24, 2018): 390–420. https://doi.org/10.1163/24055069-00304002.
If we look even further back we read Seneca the Younger in Epistulae morales, writing positively about collecting with respect to classic rhetoric:
"We should follow, men say, the example of the bees, who flit about and cull the flowers that are suitable for producing honey, and then arrange and assort in their cells all that they have brought in;
Without a clear originator, I might suggest that historically the first purpose was for memory followed closely by learning and then accumulating wisdom and knowledge (sententiae). Using them for output only came much later.
Why is there so much bad ink in the zettelkasten space about about "collecting"? (a la the "collector's fallacy") If you collect nothing, you'll have nothing. You have to start somewhere. Collecting happens first before anything useful comes out of the enterprise. Where are all these "people [who] do nothing but boast about the amount of cards in their box"? I'm not seeing lots of evidence of them in fora or online certainly. Show us your collection of examples of those to back up the claim. Are there index card hoarders out there who honestly have tens of thousands of notes with absolutely no purpose? I suspect it's rare.
If you're a collector, collect away! Take solace in the words of historian Keith Thomas:
Unfortunately, such diverse topics as literacy, numeracy, gestures, jokes, sexual morality, personal cleanliness or the treatment of animals, though central to my concerns, are hard to pursue systematically. They can’t be investigated in a single archive or repository of information. Progress depends on building up a picture from a mass of casual and unpredictable references accumulated over a long period. That makes them unsuitable subjects for a doctoral thesis, which has to be completed in a few years. But they are just the thing for a lifetime’s reading. So when I read, I am looking out for material relating to several hundred different topics.
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Reply to @Denny @richnewman @patrickrhone at https://beardystarstuff.net/2024/01/16/i-finished-reading.html
I started reading Parable of the Sower exactly one year to the date mentioned at the start of the book at the public library in Pasadena where she grew up. As a 49 year old father of a 12 year old daughter, it was a much more visceral and eerie experience than I could ever have expected. She has forever changed the perspective I have driving down the streets of our shared neighborhood.
I'm not sure if they'll have open remote registrations for it or if it will only be broadcast locally, but the local Octavia Butler Book Club has an upcoming zoom session on Feb 24 which can be found in the Pasadena Public Library's newsletter (.pdf). It will feature Dr. Kendra Parker via Zoom from Georgia to present her lecture: "Walking a Mile in Her Shoes: Exploring Octavia Butler's Archives."
The nearby Huntington Library houses her papers and some of her materials there may be accessible online.
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read [[Dan Allosso]] in Peer to Peer?
Not sure if you've seen/found it before, but as academia has been having bigger problems with granting tenure over the past 20 years, there's been a rise of discussion of alternate academia pathways, often under the term #AltAc in social media and other locations. Careers in writing in other spaces have certainly abounded here.
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I could totally see this UI with a video generated version of Niklas Luhmann answering questions using the training set of notes in his online zettelkasten at https://niklas-luhmann-archiv.de/bestand/zettelkasten/tutorial
syndication link: https://bavatuesdays.com/ai106-long-live-the-new-flesh/comment-page-1/#comment-388943
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JasperMcFly 10:38AM Flag I guess we need to collectively decide what the default meaning of "Zettelkasten" is. Given that Luhmann's version, and its digital variants are popular now, I would vote that the use of Zettelkasten therefore means the Luhmann version- as that is what most people are referring to at this point. Which begs the question: What are the sine qua non features of a Luhmannian Zettelkasten and related workflow? What features from his analog workflow and systematic numbering and linking and indexing must be present in hybrid or digital instantiations to qualify as a "Luhmannian Zettelkasten"?
reply to https://forum.zettelkasten.de/discussion/comment/19278/#Comment_19278
@JasperMcFly I'll presume that given the time differential, you may have missed my post just before yours which touches on the frivolity of the proposition of creating a single definition?
Most on this forum are going to presume that zettelkasten is precisely a slipbox in a similar form to that of Luhmann, but in practice some here and many elsewhere aren't going to see the distinction (or care). Some will unpopularly insist that a zettelkasten cannot be digital in form, but they'll also do so while simultaneously (heterodoxically and confusingly?) suggesting that one should use Wikipedia's Academic Outline of Disciplines, an idea which didn't exist during Luhmann's life.
You can make an attempt to force a definition, but I guarantee that it's a losing proposition as in practice people are going to use the word in almost any way they want—whatever you do, don't trust Humpty Dumpty's definition. It's the difference between prescriptive and proscriptive definitions. It can be seen in your very question if you look closely at your own phrase "beg the question", which in classic rhetoric means something very specific going back centuries, but in common use it has a dramatically different meaning. As ever, context will always be the king on these questions of definition, though some of us are still converging on a happy commonality.
For a bit more history here, try The Two Definitions of Zettelkasten.
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- Dec 2023
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forum.zettelkasten.de forum.zettelkasten.de
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Andy 6:32AM Flag Shouldn't the title be "Chris Rock's Zettel output process" instead of "Chris Rock's Zettelkasten output process"? Wo ist der Kasten? (Where's the box?) I can see @Sascha shaking his head: "Das ist kein Zettelkasten."
reply to Andy at https://forum.zettelkasten.de/discussion/comment/19108/#Comment_19108
I've got no evidence for nor against the presence of a box for these or any idea what the earlier portion of his process looks like at present. The bulletin board slips pictured were held up with pins and those on the table appear to be taped down, ostensibly to prevent accidental movement. Given their temporary nature and placement in this context, and the fact that they were highly portable for at least the span of the five shows he was preparing for in the documentary, there was certainly some container (even if it was as simple as a binder clip or a simple rubber band). Having seen shows like this roll in and out of venues before, I'm reasonably sure it was in a box at some point, so only a pedant would worry about it.
Box aside, the point here is that it shows a version of how he manufactures his output and manages his arrangement—portions of an overall process which are less frequently discussed and incredibly rarely visualized or pictured within the general community, much less in mass popular culture.
Many have argued that Eminem didn't have a zettelkasten either, and he definitely had both slips and a box. There's obviously no winning here... I won't worry too much about it until the naysayers' own Zettelkasten can manage to help them sell out Jones Beach Theater, The Prudential Center, PNC Bank Arts Center, Barclays Center, and Madison Square Garden.
Caveat pedanticus: Anyone talking about "Chris Rock's box" in public, might be held up to ridicule in his next sold-out tour. After Headliners Only and the Will Smith incident, I'm not taking any chances. 😜🃏🗃️
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Your having said "Friends of the Library" makes me think that your set likely isn't actually ex-Library (reference or otherwise), but likely was privately owned and donated directly to the library or their friends, who then sold them to raise money for the library itself. This is a common pattern in libraries across America and explains how you've gotten such a pristine copy.
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Best Organization/Index System? .t3_18aggj9._2FCtq-QzlfuN-SwVMUZMM3 { --postTitle-VisitedLinkColor: #9b9b9b; --postTitleLink-VisitedLinkColor: #9b9b9b; --postBodyLink-VisitedLinkColor: #989898; }
reply to u/whiteo3 at https://www.reddit.com/r/commonplacebook/comments/18aggj9/best_organizationindex_system/
One of the most common methods may be using John Locke's indexing system. https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/john-lockes-method-for-common-place-books-1685/ (And, yes, it's THAT John Locke...)
You could have a single notebook you use as your index which indexes the rest. Not sure how you number pages (or not), but you could keep a running page number from one notebook to the next to make differentiating notebooks a bit easier.
W. Ross Ashby was known to keep running page numbers across notebooks like this, however, instead of a notebook-based index, he actually used index cards to index them (the way libraries used to index books by subject, but instead of indexing books, he was obviously indexing quotes, ideas, and notes). So you could use a card with your index word on it with page numbers (and potentially brief notes). Then just file the category headings alphabetically to find them later. His collection has been digitized, so you can view it online to see what he was doing: http://www.rossashby.info/journal/index.html
If you want to do hybrid paper/digital you could look at https://www.indxd.ink/, a digital, web-based index tool for your analog notebooks. Ostensibly allows one to digitally index their paper notebooks (page numbers optional). It emails you weekly text updates, so you've got a back up of your data if the site/service disappears.
I've used Obsidian in combination with Hypothes.is and documented the way I created a subject index out of it: https://boffosocko.com/2022/05/20/creating-a-commonplace-book-or-zettelkasten-index-from-hypothes-is-tags/
I've also used WordPress as a commonplace of sorts and documented what I did to make an index for that: https://boffosocko.com/2021/09/04/an-index-for-my-digital-commonplace-book/
Searching the entire sub may also unearth other options to get your creative indexing juices flowing: https://www.reddit.com/r/commonplacebook/search/?q=index&restrict_sr=1
Good luck!
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How to fold and cut a Christmas star<br /> Christian Lawson-Perfect https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S90WPkgxvas
What a great simple example with some interesting complexity.
For teachers trying this with students, when one is done making some five pointed stars, the next questions a curious mathematician might ask are: how might I generalize this new knowledge to make a 6 pointed star? A 7 pointed star? a 1,729 pointed star? Is there a maximum number of points possible? Is there a minimum? Can any star be made without a cut? What happens if we make more than one cut? Are there certain numbers for which a star can't be made? Is there a relationship between the number of folds made and the number of points? What does all this have to do with our basic definition of what a paper star might look like? What other questions might we ask to extend this little idea of cutting paper stars?
Recalling some results from my third grade origami days, based on the thickness of most standard office paper, a typical sheet of paper can only be folded in half at most 7 times. This number can go up a bit if the thickness of the paper is reduced, but having a maximum number of potential folds suggests there is an upper bound for how many points a star might have using this method of construction.
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- Nov 2023
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Lovely. I guess what I'm trying to define is some methodology for practicing. Many times I simply resort to my exhaustive method, which has worked for me in the past simply due to brute force.Thank you for taking the time to respond and for what look like some very interesting references.
reply to u/ethanzanemiller at https://www.reddit.com/r/Zettelkasten/comments/185xmuh/comment/kb778dy/?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=web2x&context=3
Some of your methodology will certainly depend on what questions you're asking, how well you know your area already, and where you'd like to go. If you're taking notes as part of learning a new area, they'll be different and you'll treat them differently than notes you're collecting on ideas you're actively building on or intriguing facts you're slowly accumulating. Often you'll have specific questions in mind and you'll do a literature review to see what's happing around that area and then read and take notes as a means of moving yourself closer to answering your particular questions.
Take for example, the frequently asked questions (both here in this forum and by note takers across history): how big is an idea? what is an atomic note? or even something related to the question of how small can a fact be? If this is a topic you're interested in addressing, you'll make note of it as you encounter it in various settings and see that various authors use different words to describe these ideas. Over time, you'll be able to tag them with various phrases and terminologies like "atomic notes", "one idea per card", "note size", or "note lengths". I didn't originally set out to answer these questions specifically, but my interest in the related topics across intellectual history allowed such a question to emerge from my work and my notes.
Once you've got a reasonable collection, you can then begin analyzing what various authors say about the topic. Bring them all to "terms" to ensure that they're talking about the same things and then consider what arguments they're making about the topic and write up your own ideas about what is happening to answer those questions you had. Perhaps a new thesis emerges about the idea? Some have called this process having a conversation with the texts and their authors or as Robert Hutchins called it participating in "The Great Conversation".
Almost anyone in the forum here could expound on what an "atomic note" is for a few minutes, but they're likely to barely scratch the surface beyond their own definition. Based on the notes linked above, I've probably got enough of a collection on the idea of the length of a note that I can explore it better than any other ten people here could. My notes would allow me a lot of leverage and power to create some significant subtlety and nuance on this topic. (And it helps that they're all shared publicly so you can see what I mean a bit more clearly; most peoples' notes are private/hidden, so seeing examples are scant and difficult at best.)
Some of the overall process of having and maintaining a zettelkasten for creating material is hard to physically "see". This is some of the benefit of Victor Margolin's video example of how he wrote his book on the history of design. He includes just enough that one can picture what's happening despite his not showing the deep specifics. I wrote a short piece about how I used my notes about delving into S.D. Goitein's work to write a short article a while back and looking at the article, the footnotes, and links to my original notes may be illustrative for some: https://boffosocko.com/2023/01/14/a-note-about-my-article-on-goitein-with-respect-to-zettelkasten-output-processes/. The exercise is a tedious one (though not as tedious as it was to create and hyperlink everything), but spend some time to click on each link to see the original notes and compare them with the final text. Some of the additional benefit of reading it all is that Goitein also had a zettelkasten which he used in his research and in leaving copies of it behind other researchers still actively use his translations and notes to continue on the conversation he started about the contents of the Cairo Geniza. Seeing some of his example, comparing his own notes/cards and his writings may be additionally illustrative as well, though take care as many of his notes are in multiple languages.
Another potentially useful example is this video interview with Kathleen Coleman from the Thesaurus Linguae Latinae. It's in the realm of historical linguistics and lexicography, but she describes researchers collecting masses of data (from texts, inscriptions, coins, graffiti, etc.) on cards which they can then study and arrange to write their own articles about Latin words and their use across time/history. It's an incredibly simple looking example because they're creating a "dictionary", but the work involved was painstaking historical work to be sure.
Again, when you're done, remember to go back and practice for yourself. Read. Ask questions of the texts and sources you're working with. Write them down. Allow your zettelkasten to become a ratchet for your ideas. New ideas and questions will emerge. Write them down! Follow up on them. Hunt down the answers. Make notes on others' attempts to answer similar questions. Then analyze, compare, and contrast them all to see what you might have to say on the topics. Rinse and repeat.
As a further and final (meta) example, some of my answer to your questions has been based on my own experience, but the majority of it is easy to pull up, because I can pose your questions not to my experience, but to my own zettelkasten and then quickly search and pull up a variety of examples I've collected over time. Of course I have far more experience with my own zettelkasten, so it's easier and quicker for me to query it than for you, but you'll build this facility with your own over time.
Good luck. 🗃️
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Taking notes for historical writing .t3_185xmuh._2FCtq-QzlfuN-SwVMUZMM3 { --postTitle-VisitedLinkColor: #9b9b9b; --postTitleLink-VisitedLinkColor: #9b9b9b; --postBodyLink-VisitedLinkColor: #989898; } questionI'm trying to understand how to adopt parts of the Zettelkasten method for thinking about historical information. I wrote a PhD in history. My note-taking methodology was a complete mess the whole time. I used note-taking to digest a book, but it would take me two or three times longer than just reading. I would go back over each section and write down the pieces that seemed crucial. Sometimes, when I didn't know a subject well, that could take time. In the end, I would sometimes have many pages of notes in sequential order sectioned the way the book was sectioned, essentially an overlay of the book's structure. It was time-consuming, very hard, not useless at all, but inefficient.Now consider the Zettelkasten idea. I haven't read much of Luhmann. I recall he was a sociologist, a theorist in the grand style. So, in other words, they operate at a very abstract level. When I read about the Zettelkasten method, that's the way it reads to me. A system for combining thoughts and ideas. Now, you'll say that's an artificial distinction, perhaps...a fact is still rendered in thought, has atomicity to it etc. And I agree. However, the thing about facts is there are just A LOT of them. Before you write your narrative, you are drowning in facts. The writing of history is the thing that allows you to bring some order and selectivity to them, but you must drown first; otherwise, you have not considered all the possibilities and potentialities in the past that the facts reveal. To bring it back to Zettelkasten, the idea of Zettel is so appealing, but how does it work when dealing with an overwhelming number of facts? It's much easier to imagine creating a Zettelkasten from more rarefied thoughts provoked by reading.So, what can I learn from the Zettelkasten method? How can I apply some or all of its methodologies, practically speaking? What would change about my initial note-taking of a book if I were to apply Zettelkasten ideas and practice? Here is a discussion about using the method for "facts". The most concrete suggestions here suggest building Zettels around facts in some ways -- either a single fact, or groups of facts, etc. But in my experience, engaging with a historical text is a lot messier than that. There are facts, but also the author's rendering of the facts, and there are quotes (all the historical "gossip"), and it's all in there together as the author builds their narrative. You are trying to identify the key facts, the author's particular angle and interpretation, preserve your thoughts and reactions, and save these quotes, the richest part of history, the real evidence. In short, it is hard to imagine being able to isolate clear Zettel topics amid this reading experience.In Soenke Ahrens' book "How to Take Smart Notes," he describes three types of notes: fleeting notes (these are fleeting ideas), literature notes, and permanent notes. In that classification, I'm talking about "literature notes." Ahrens says these should be "extremely selective". But with the material I'm talking about it becomes a question. How can you be selective when you still don't know which facts you care about or want to maintain enough detail in your notes so you don't foreclose the possibilities in the historical narrative too early?Perhaps this is just an unsolvable problem. Perhaps there is no choice but to maintain a discipline of taking "selective" literature notes. But there's something about the Zettelkasten method that gives me the feeling that my literature notes could be more detailed and chaotic and open to refinement later.Does my dilemma explained here resonate with anyone who has tried this method for intense historical writing? If so, I'd like to hear you thoughts, or better yet, see some concrete examples of how you've worked.
reply to u/ethanzanemiller at https://www.reddit.com/r/Zettelkasten/comments/185xmuh/taking_notes_for_historical_writing/
Rather than spending time theorizing on the subject, particularly since you sound like you're neck-deep already, I would heartily recommend spending some time practicing it heavily within the area you're looking at. Through a bit of time and experience, more of your questions will become imminently clear, especially if you're a practicing historian.
A frequently missing piece to some of this puzzle for practicing academics is upping the level of how you read and having the ability to consult short pieces of books and articles rather than reading them "cover-to-cover" which is often unnecessary for one's work. Of particular help here, try Adler and Van Doren, and specifically their sections on analytical and syntopical reading.
- Adler, Mortimer J., and Charles Van Doren. How to Read a Book: The Classical Guide to Intelligent Reading. Revised and Updated ed. edition. 1940. Reprint, Touchstone, 2011.
In addition to the list of practicing historians I'd provided elsewhere on the topic, you might also appreciate sociologist Beatrice Webb's short appendix C in My Apprenticeship or her longer related text. She spends some time talking about handling dates and the database nature of querying collected facts and ideas to do research and to tell a story.
- Webb, Beatrice Potter. My Apprenticeship. First Edition. New York: Longmans, Green & Co., 1926. https://archive.org/details/myapprenticeship0000beat/page/412/mode/2up.
- Webb, Sidney, and Beatrice Webb. Methods of Social Study. London; New York: Longmans, Green & Co., 1932. http://archive.org/details/b31357891.
Also helpful might be Mill's article which became a chapter in one of his later books:
- Mills, C. Wright. “On Intellectual Craftsmanship (1952).” Society 17, no. 2 (January 1, 1980): 63–70. https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02700062.
Perhaps u/danallosso may have something illuminating to add, or you can skim through his responses on the subject on Reddit or via his previous related writing: https://danallosso.substack.com/.
Enough historians and various other humanists have been practicing these broad methods for centuries to bear out their usefulness in researching and organizing their work. Read a bit, but truly: practice, practice, and more practice is going to be your best friend here.
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Can you provide any more information about how this method works in detail?
reply to u/ethanzanemiller at https://www.reddit.com/r/Zettelkasten/comments/1843k2w/comment/kb4d882/?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=web2x&context=3
Presuming you came into this from a search on "history" or a related topic rather than long time experience in this sub?
A card index, fichier boîte (French), or zettelkasten (German) is broadly the use of index cards (or digital versions) for research and writing. (I generally frame it as an extension of keeping a commonplace book.)
But some of it is best described within the area of "historical method" by practicing historians themselves, so also try these texts written by historians on the subject:
Allosso, Dan, and S. F. Allosso. How to Make Notes and Write. Minnesota State Pressbooks, 2022. https://minnstate.pressbooks.pub/write/.
Barzun, Jacques. The Modern Researcher. Boston : Houghton Mifflin Co., 1992. http://archive.org/details/modernresearcher00barz_1.
Dow, Earle Wilbur. Principles of a Note-System for Historical Studies. New York: Century Company, 1924.
Eco, Umberto. How to Write a Thesis. Translated by Caterina Mongiat Farina and Geoff Farina. 1977. Reprint, Cambridge, MA, USA: MIT Press, 2015. https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/how-write-thesis.
Gottschalk, Louis Reichenthal. Understanding History: A Primer of Historical Method. 1st ed. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1950. https://www.amazon.com/Understanding-History-Louis-Gottschalk/dp/B001OY27L6.
Goutor, Jacques. The Card-File System of Note-Taking. Approaching Ontario’s Past 3. Toronto: Ontario Historical Society, 1980. http://archive.org/details/cardfilesystemof0000gout.
Langlois, Charles Victor, and Charles Seignobos. Introduction to the Study of History. Translated by George Godfrey Berry. First. New York: Henry Holt and company, 1898. http://archive.org/details/cu31924027810286.
Margolin, Victor. The Process of Writing World History of Design, 2015. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kxyy0THLfuI.
Thomas, Keith. “Diary: Working Methods.” London Review of Books, June 10, 2010. https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v32/n11/keith-thomas/diary.
Maybe start with Keith Thomas and Margolin which are short and then jump to either Goutor or Allosso (first half of that text) which are slightly longer but still quick reads. Umberto Eco may be the dean of studies here, though Barzun has been fairly influential. If you prefer, you can practice Luhmann's method, which is very similar though with a twist, and laid out at https://zettelkasten.de/posts/overview/.
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Who uses a card index? Top historians, that's who
reply to u/atomicnotes at https://www.reddit.com/r/Zettelkasten/comments/1843k2w/who_uses_a_card_index_top_historians_thats_who/
Nice finds u/atomicnotes.
We can add them to the list of other known historians who used zettelkasten including: - Barbara Tuchman - Victor Margolin - S.D. Goitein - Gotthard Deutsch - Jacques Barzun - Henry F. Graff - Keith Thomas - Jacques Goutor - Umberto Eco - Frederic L. Paxson - Earle W. Dow - Aby Warburg - Frederick Jackson Turner - Theodor Mommsen - Charles Victor Langlois - Charles Seignobos - Ernst Bernheim*
Certainly there are several hundreds (thousands?) I've missed. Those marked with a (*) have written texts covering note taking or historical method.
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I appreciate they're anagrams, but Adler wrote about syntopical reading, not synoptical reading. Syntopical = same topic. Show less Read more 15
reply to RichardCarter, timbushell8640, _jared, et al at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=laXcJyx9xCc&lc=UgwDgpIktVi8yFDjEVZ4AaABAg
I see you @timbushell8640 and @RichardCarter. ;)
Let's be clear that synoptic (meaning "seen together") is certainly a useful word apart from syntopic. Quite often it's used to describe the books Matthew, Mark, and Luke of the New Testament which are sometimes placed together on the same page to compare the stories, particularly for historical analysis. This sort of reading, not too dissimilar to syntopical reading, is a fantastic analytical tool as well and is described well by Bart Ehrman in one of his more scholarly works. Reading these books this way shows that the so-called synoptic gospels are anything but consistent (talk about crosses to bear....) Given the increase in the number of biblical scholars in the late 1800s doing this specific sort of reading (synoptic) may have influenced Adler's choice of neologism to describe that particular reading method. For those that haven't seen a synoptic book presentation, Throckmorton's version is a fairly good/popular one, though others certainly exist, including versions for translators which have side by side versions of books in Hebrew, Latin, Greek, etc. These can be found by searching for books with "interlinear", "parallel" and/or "polyglot" in their titles, especially with respect to bibles. They're somewhat similar to the layouts of the Loeb Classics collection, though those only have Greek/English or Latin/English in parallel.
Ehrman, Bart D. The New Testament: A Historical Introduction to the Early Christian Writings. Second Edition. Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press, 2000. Chapter 6, "The Synoptic Problem and Its Significance for Interpretation", pp76-83.
Throckmorton, Jr., Burton H. Gospel Parallels: A Comparison of the Synoptic Gospels, New Revised Standard Version. 5th Revised edition. Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 1992.
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That book annotating monster Adler indicated that if he read books second and subsequent times that he would generally purchase a new copy and mark it up afresh. Doublemonster!
See: How to Read a Book. Los Angeles: KCET Los Angeles, 1975. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y_rizr8bb0c. It was one of the later episodes as I recall.
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level 2Apprehensive_Net5630Op · 3 hr. agoI've come to think the thousands category is kind of superfluous. Instead of starting 2000, just start a card "2 management" and then create a card "25 leadership" and add below, e.g. "251 blah blah", "252 blah blah"2ReplyShareReportSaveFollowlevel 3marco89lcdm · 2 hr. agoMmm.. interesting .. Although I think is too late as I’m already well into the “2000” category and the problem presented once I’ve started to do some leadership cards. Those are 3 or 4 and I can still amend the ID number, but the management one are almost 30 already, I don’t feel like changing everything while so well advanced.. this could put me off from keeping doing it completely. Maybe worth knowing that I didn’t have an exhaustive index yet.. because of the fact that IDing the card is not clear for me
reply to u/Apprehensive_Net5630 and u/marco89lcdm at https://www.reddit.com/r/antinet/comments/17m7ggz/comment/k83bou9/?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=web2x&context=3
Don't sweat the difference as there is a one-to-one and onto (or bijective) relationship between what you're doing and what u/Apprehensive_Net5630 suggests. Mathematicians would call the relationship homomorphic (ie: of the same shape), so other than the make-work exercise, you'd end up with the same exact thing with the same ordering in the end.
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Cannot get it either to be honest. I want to use the antinet method for 2 main topics: Management and Personal growthIn management, for sure needs to add notion of leadership for example: how to approach the coding identification? I’ve assigned 2000 to management: shall I assign 2500 to all cards related to leadership? This is just an example, it’s a bit unclear for me so far.
reply to u/marco89lcdm at https://www.reddit.com/r/antinet/comments/17m7ggz/comment/k839k22/?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=web2x&context=3
The way you're currently thinking is a top down approach in which you already know everything and you're attempting to organize it to make it easier for others who know nothing about the ideas to find them. The Luhmann model supposes you know nothing about anything to begin with and you're attempting to create order from the bottom up, solely by putting related ideas you're building on close to each other and giving them numbers so that you might find them again when you need them.
If your only use is for those two topics and closely related subtopics and nothing else, then consider not using a Luhmann-artig model? Leave off the numbers and create two tabbed cards with those headings (and possibly related subheadings) and then sort your related cards behind them. (This is closer to the commonplace book tradition maintained on index cards and used by those like Mortimer J. Adler et al., Robert Greene, Ryan Holiday and Billy Oppenheimer. Example: https://billyoppenheimer.com/notecard-system/)
Otherwise the mistake you may be making is mentally associating the top level numbers with the topics. Break this habit! The numbers are only there so you can index ideas against them to be able to find them again! These numbers aren't like the Dewey Decimal system where 510.### will always mean something to do with math. You'll specifically want to intermingle disparate topics, so the only purpose the numbers provide is the ability to find what you're looking for by using the index which will give you a neighborhood in which you'll find the ideas you know are going to be hiding there or very near by.
Cards that are near to each other (using the numbers as an idea of ordering and re-finding) create a neighborhood of related ideas, even if they're disparate in topics. This might allow you to intermingle two related ideas, one which is in anthropology and another from mathematics for example, but which would otherwise potentially be thousands of cards away from each other if done in a Dewey-like system.
Or to take your example, what do you do with an idea that relates to both management AND personal growth? If it's closer to an idea on management you might place it near a related idea on that branch rather than in the personal growth section where it may be potentially less useful in the future. (You can always cross index them if need be, but place it where it creates the closest link and thus likely the greatest value for building on top of your previous ideas.)
For more on this, try: https://boffosocko.com/2022/10/27/thoughts-on-zettelkasten-numbering-systems/
I suspect that Scheper suggests using the Academic Outline of Disciplines as a numbering structure because it's an early choice he made for himself and it provides a perch to give people a concrete place to start. Sadly this does a disservice because it's closer to the older commonplace topical method rather than to the spirit of the ordering that Luhmann was doing. It's especially difficult for beginners who have a natural tendency to want to do this sort of top-down approach.
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What do you do for a calendar? I'm considering moving from a moleskine GTD system to index cards for reasons you mention (waste paper, can't re-order), but love my 2-year calendar at the front
reply to verita-servus at https://www.reddit.com/r/gtd/comments/15pfz8o/comment/k7iqjwa/?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=web2x&context=3
Last year I had a Field Notes card with the year's calendar on it that I kept with my daily cards when necessary. (I think it came included with their "Ignition" edition.) Many companies give these sorts of calendars away as PR.
This year I used a Mizushima Perpetual Calendar Stamp to create my own custom card with the coming years' dates. (I also often use this stamp for individual months on other types of cards.) I'm sure you could also find something online to print out or draw your own if you wish. These index card specific templates might give one ideas: https://www.calendarsquick.com/printables/free.html.
Pretty much any spread one might make in a bullet journal can be recreated in index cards. Some of the biggest full page spreads or double page spreads are still doable, they may just need to be shrunk a bit or broken up. I've also printed things onto larger 8x12" card stock and then folded them down to 4x6" before to use as either larger notes or mini-folders as necessary. Usually I do this for holding the month's receipts.
This set of calendar cards from Present & Correct which are done in letterpress looked nice if you wanted to go more to the luxe side as well as to the larger side.
Given the sticker market for Hobonichi and other similar planners, you could also buy some custom decorative stickers which you could attach to cards as well. And there's nothing keeping you from just writing it all out by hand if you wish.
Options abound.
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Analog zettelkasten for natural sciences .t3_17kui2u._2FCtq-QzlfuN-SwVMUZMM3 { --postTitle-VisitedLinkColor: #9b9b9b; --postTitleLink-VisitedLinkColor: #9b9b9b; --postBodyLink-VisitedLinkColor: #989898; }
Reply to u/Wooden-School-4091 at https://www.reddit.com/r/Zettelkasten/comments/17kui2u/analog_zettelkasten_for_natural_sciences/
Given that Carl Linnaeus "invented" the standardized 3x5 inch index card and used it heavily in his scientific work (read Isabelle Charmantier and Staffan Müller-Wille's works for more on his practice), and a variety of others including me, use it for mathematics, physics, chemistry, biology, etc., Zettelkasten can certainly be used for STEM, STEAM, and any of the natural sciences.
See also, notes and links at: https://hypothes.is/users/chrisaldrich?q=tag%3A%22zettelkasten+for+studying%22
If I were using it for classes/university/general studying via lectures, I'd base my practice primarily on Cornell Notes in combination with creating questions/cards for spaced repetition and/or a variation on Leitner's System.
Some of the best material on spaced repetition these days can be found via:
- Soren Bjornstad: https://controlaltbackspace.org/repeat/
- Piotr Wozniak: https://super-memory.com/articles/20rules.htm
and other material on their sites.
Beyond this, I'd focus my direct zettelkasten practice less on the learning portion and more on the developing or generating ideas portion of the work. Some of my practice with respect to mathematics can be found here: https://www.reddit.com/r/Zettelkasten/comments/17bqztm/applying_zettelkasten_for_math_heavy_subjects/
For those interested, it may bear mentioning that Bjornstad, an engineer at Remnote, has a TiddlyWiki-based zettelkasten at https://zettelkasten.sorenbjornstad.com/#PublicHomepage:PublicHomepage which he demonstrates with a walk through at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GjpjE5pMZMI
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Value of the "Graph" .t3_17jscyk._2FCtq-QzlfuN-SwVMUZMM3 { --postTitle-VisitedLinkColor: #9b9b9b; --postTitleLink-VisitedLinkColor: #9b9b9b; --postBodyLink-VisitedLinkColor: #989898; }
I have been curious what their Great Books project would have looked like if they'd kept it up since 1952. Adding additional layers of additional great books as well as seminal books from the 20th century onward. With digital humanities projects abounding as well as digitization of various zettelkasten like structures (aka databases), it would be interesting to see what a digitized version of the Syntopicon would look like today. u/AllossoDan, are you cutting it back up into digital chunks?! Need help? 😁🗃️
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reply to Mark Dykeman in A mystery I would like to solve 2023-10-25
In addition to the 5-6th century invasion of Angles and Saxons from roughly Northern Germany into Southern England, there was a large movement of Scandinavian peoples (Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, etc. weren't even a glimmer of countries then), with the Viking invasions of England in the 7-11th centuries. Many of these peoples settled along the coasts and intermarried and brought their customs, traditions, language, and most importantly in your quest, their names. A lot of these peoples immigrated into Northumbria which was an early medieval Anglo-Saxon kingdom in what is now Northern England and south-east Scotland. Perhaps this history may "solve" some of the distal mystery for you? Kenneth Harl's "Vikings" may give some broad strokes of the history here if you're curious: https://www.thegreatcourses.com/courses/vikings. (Naturally there may have been migration after that time too.) England is far more diverse in its roots than the majority give it credit for, though the branching from Celtic roots may mean that genetically traceable differences may largely be a wash for most. Some from the broader UK will find only a single broad "genetic smear" of Celtic ancestry with a 1-2% hint of Italian ancestry, often resulting from intermarriage at the time of the Roman invasion in the first century.
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Is there a list of every possibility a Latin verb can take on, and it's English meaning? .t3_17hvr75._2FCtq-QzlfuN-SwVMUZMM3 { --postTitle-VisitedLinkColor: #9b9b9b; --postTitleLink-VisitedLinkColor: #9b9b9b; --postBodyLink-VisitedLinkColor: #989898; }
I've not used Mango before, but if it's like other similar apps (Duolingo, Babel, etc.) which focus primarily on spoken language and general understanding over grammar (and you've never learned other languages or had a good grounding in grammar) you're likely going to be a tad lost. These apps usually focus on spoken fluency over reading/writing which is how most Latin grammar books and high school/college courses are traditionally laid out.
You've got options:
- ignore your question(s) and move on with what the app presents and you'll slowly/eventually catch on naturally, which is how many apps geared toward fluency are meant to be done. Trust that eventually your questions will be cleared up, or
- pick up a Latin grammar and begin working your way through the structured reading/writing approach, or
- do a little of both approaches depending on what your focus for reading, writing, and speaking Latin may be.
Your question will become much clearer to you when you've seen how verbs are parsed within a grammar textbook (using person, number, and tense) as they're very logically and rigidly structured outside of a handful of irregular verbs. (Most books present these as a grid of two columns (by number: singular/plural) and three rows (first, second, third person).) As a beginner, you'll be glad to know there hasn't been a huge jump in the state of the art in Latin for several hundred years, so even inexpensive, used copies of Wheelock, Allen & Greenough, or Jenny/Scudder/Baade or a trip to the library for one of them should help you along your way. Once you've seen some of the grammatical structure of verbs and how they work, you'll come to understand that a list like what you're looking for isn't really what you're looking for.
You could, likely, in a couple of days have a rote memorization of most of the forms of almost all verbs such that when you encounter them, but in practice this means that you have to pick each one apart like a formula as you encounter them. You may be better off practicing/drilling each of the ones you encounter to make it an elemental part of you. This way you'll be able to sight read or listen and respond much more quickly and much faster than anyone who learns from standard grammars.
Good luck!
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Yeah, I want back in search history and see Sascha started around 2014. There are hardly any references to ZK before 2012.
reply tu u/sscheper and u/Barycenter0 at https://www.reddit.com/r/Zettelkasten/comments/17gmrj8/before_2021_who_here_was_using_a_luhmannian/
Before 2021, who here was using a Luhmannian analog Zettelkasten?
This blogpost by Manfred Kuehn dating from 2007-12-16 is one of the earliest posts about Luhmann's Zettelkasten I've seen referenced on the early web (at least in an English language setting). You'll notice that Christian Tietze, the creator of zettelkasten.de, pops up in the comments, though it wasn't until almost six years later.
Daniel Lüdecke was also obviously reading Kuehn by 2013 and making his digital version of ZKN3. His post has a reference to a 2001 web post in German, but sadly it's not archived. One might presume he tried physical index cards prior to implementing his digital solution.
German speakers may be better versed to indicate a greater number of potential users in the 80s through the 00s as Luhmann's paper and method were relatively well known, though physical index cards were obviously going out of fashion during that time period. It's most likely that it was academics using it. By the late 00s into 2015, there were probably several dozens of people doing this practice, but identifying/contacting them will require a lot of legwork.
The zettelkasten.de forum and blog posts may indicate quite a number of users prior to 2021, but I'll leave that work to others. Christian and Sasha may have better approximations for that time period.
Given the number of digital users who are probably all mostly Luhmann-adjacent in their practices (at best), there likely still aren't a lot of people (digital or analog) who are following his particular recipe or method. Most of what I see discussed in zettelkasten and zettelkasten adjacent spaces online these days could best be described as a mélange of commonplace book and wiki-esque methods with a focus toward smaller atomic level notes. Most practices vary across a pretty wide spectrum.
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danallosso.substack.com danallosso.substack.com
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reply to Our Journey, Day 84 by Dan Allosso at https://danallosso.substack.com/p/our-journey-day-84
There's already a movement afoot calling for schools who are dramatically cutting their humanities departments to quit calling what they're offering a liberal education. This popped up on Monday and has a long list of cuts: https://www.insidehighered.com/opinion/views/2023/10/23/liberal-education-name-only-opinion I was surprised that Bemidji wasn't listed, but then again there may be several dozens which have made announcements, but which aren't widely known yet. The problem may be much larger and broader than anyone is acknowledging.
Cutting down dozens of faculties into either "schools" or even into some sort of catch all called "Humanities" may be even more marginalizing to the enterprise.
Apparently, the Morlocks seem to think that the Eloi will be easier to manage if there isn't any critical thinking?
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Anyone use a FiloFax or similar for a commonplace book? .t3_17drtzn._2FCtq-QzlfuN-SwVMUZMM3 { --postTitle-VisitedLinkColor: #9b9b9b; --postTitleLink-VisitedLinkColor: #9b9b9b; --postBodyLink-VisitedLinkColor: #989898; }
reply to u/practicalSloth at https://www.reddit.com/r/commonplacebook/comments/17drtzn/anyone_use_a_filofax_or_similar_for_a_commonplace/
For centuries, many have kept their commonplace books on index cards or slips of paper) rather than on book/notebook pages just like you're suggesting. They then indexed them against topic words and filed the ideas alphabetically rather than writing them in books and indexing them separately.
Some popular versions of the practice which are described/viewable online include:
- Ryan Holiday: https://ryanholiday.net/the-notecard-system-the-key-for-remembering-organizing-and-using-everything-you-read/ and https://thoughtcatalog.com/ryan-holiday/2013/08/how-and-why-to-keep-a-commonplace-book/ Ryan has also covered some of his methods on his YouTube channel as well.
- Billy Oppenheimer: https://billyoppenheimer.com/notecard-system/
- Victor Margolin: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kxyy0THLfuI
- Mortimer J. Adler et. al.: https://boffosocko.com/2023/09/28/mortimer-j-adlers-syntopicon-a-topically-arranged-collaborative-slipbox/
Others with index card or small slip-based commonplaces include Ronald Reagan, Phyllis Diller (whose commonplaced joke file is now at the Smithsonian), and Joan Rivers.
In German, this general practice was called zettelkasten (which translates as slip box), there are lots of people doing versions of this in r/Zettelkasten following some of Niklas Luhmann's method. Many more are using digital platforms like Obsidian, Logseq, etc. for this.
Certainly putting it into a FiloFax is a flexible and doable option.
I've written a bit about the mistaken identities and differences between Niklas Luhmann's practice which has become popular in English speaking countries over the last decade and index card-based commonplaces: https://boffosocko.com/2022/10/22/the-two-definitions-of-zettelkasten/.
Perhaps some of the examples will give you some ideas for how to best do your own. Good luck!
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ZK system for Project and Task management? .t3_17dp8nl._2FCtq-QzlfuN-SwVMUZMM3 { --postTitle-VisitedLinkColor: #9b9b9b; --postTitleLink-VisitedLinkColor: #9b9b9b; --postBodyLink-VisitedLinkColor: #989898; }
Reply to u/Hileotech at https://www.reddit.com/r/Zettelkasten/comments/17dp8nl/zk_system_for_project_and_task_management/
They don't have the same structure as Luhmann's zettelkasten (they don't really need to and may frankly work better without them), but index cards were heavily used in business and project planning settings for decades prior to the popularization of the computer.
I've documented one productivity method from 1903 called the Memindex which was a precursor to things like the Hipster PDA, the Pile of Index Cards, and 43 folders methods which have been popular since the early 2000s. Details and pointers can be found at The Memindex Method: an early precursor of the Memex, Hipster PDA, 43 Folders, GTD, BaSB, and Bullet Journal systems. Addition details can also be found at A year of Bullet Journaling on Index Cards inspired by the Memindex Methodas well as in the comments.
Index card-based project management techniques with items broken out by task can be used to create physical Kanban boards or even arranged in Gantt chart-like fashion on walls, bulletin boards, or tables.
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More toward the notes in the video themselves (I'm more in media studies and far less conversant in theater studies): from my own zettelkasten on the live nature/immediacy of performance subject, I've seen how some older cultures (ancient Greeks and all sorts of Indigenous peoples, including modern Australian indigenous) use(d) their associative memories in ways we don't generally today, and as such would have been able to "re-live" performances which have occurred in the past without modern recording tools. Perhaps it's been explored previously, but if it's of interest to you and your current work or perhaps post-Ph.D., Lynne Kelly's Knowledge & Power in Prehistoric Societies: Orality, Memory and the Transmission of Culture (Cambridge, 2015) may be helpful along with the supporting works of Milman Parry, Albert Lord, and Walter J. Ong (esp. Orality and Literacy; Methuen, 1982). If you really want to spelunk this area, there are some additional explorations of these in the overlap of Frances Yates' (1966) discussion of memory theaters in Western culture.
Robert Kanigel's "Hearing Homer's Song: The Brief Life and Big Idea of Milman Parry (Knopf, 2021), may provide a quick/fun (audiobook available) non-technical introduction into Milman's work on Homer for those who haven't come across it before and are interested in early performance techniques. It provides an intriguing and entertaining detective story on multiple fronts.
As ever, thanks for sharing your notes and the fascinating references within them... 🗃❤
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Any recommendations on Analog way of doing it? Not the Antinet shit
reply to u/IamOkei at https://www.reddit.com/r/Zettelkasten/comments/17beucn/comment/k5s6aek/?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=web2x&context=3
u/IamOkei, I know you've got a significant enough practice that not much of what I might suggest may be helpful beyond your own extension of what you've got and how it is or isn't working for you. Perhaps chatting with a zettelkasten therapist may be helpful? Does anyone have "Zettelkasten Whisperer" on a business card yet?! More seriously, I occasionally dump some of my problems and issues into a notebook, unpublished on my blog, or even into a section of my own zettelkasten, which I never index or reconsult, as a helpful practice. Others like Henry David Thoreau have done something like this and there's a common related practice of writing "Morning Pages" that you can explore. My own version is somewhat similar to the idea of rubber duck debugging but focuses on my own work. You might try doing something like this in one of Bob Doto's cohorts or by way of private consulting sessions. Another free version of this could be found by participating in Will's regular weekly posts/threads "Share with us what is happening in your ZK this week" at https://forum.zettelkasten.de/. It's always a welcoming and constructive space. There are also some public and private (I won't out them) Discords where some of the practiced hands chat and commiserate with each other. Even the Obsidian PKM/Zettelkasten Discord channels aren't very Obsidian/digital-focused that you couldn't participate as an analog practitioner. I've even found that participating in book clubs related to some of my interests can be quite helpful in talking out ideas before writing them down. There are certainly options for working out and extending your own practice.
Beyond this, and without knowing more of your specific issues, I can only offer some broad thoughts which expand on some of the earlier discussion above.
I recommend stripping away Scheper's religious fervor, some of which he seems to have thrown over lately along with the idea of a permanent note or "main card" (something I think is a grave mistake), and trying something closer to Luhmann's idea of ZKII.
An alternate method, especially if you like a nice notebook or a particular fountain pen, might be to take all of your basic literature/fleeting notes along with the bibliographic data in a notebook and then just use your analog index cards/slips to make your permanent notes and your index.
Ultimately it's all a lot of the same process, though it may come down to what you want to call it and your broad philosophy. If you're anti-antinet, definitely quit using the verbiage for the framing there and lean toward the words used by Ahrens, Dan Allosso, Gerald Weinberg, Mark Bernstein, Umberto Eco, Beatrice Webb, Jacques Barzun & Henry Graff, or any of the dozens of others or even make up your own. Goodness knows we need a lot more names and categories for types of notes—just like we all need another one page blog post about how the Zettelkasten method works by someone who's been at it for a week. Maybe someone will bring all these authors to terms one day?
Generally once you know what sorts of ideas you're most interested in, you take fewer big notes on administrivia and focus more of your note taking towards your own personal goals and desires. (Taking notes to learn a subject are certainly game, but often they serve little purpose after-the-fact.) You can also focus less on note taking within your entertainment reading (usually a waste) and focusing more heavily on richer material (books and journal articles) that is "above you" in Adler's framing. You might make hundreds of highlights and annotations in a particular book, but only get two or three serious ideas and notes out of it ultimately. Focus on this and leave the rest. If you're aware of the Pareto principle or the 80/20 rule, then spend the majority of your time on the grander permanent notes (10-20%), and a lot less time worrying about the all the rest (the 80-90%).
In the example above relating to Marx, you can breeze through some low level introductory material for context, but nothing is going to beat reading Marx himself a few times. The notes you make on his text will have tremendously more value than the ones you took on the low level context. A corollary to this is that you're highly unlikely to earn a Ph.D. or discover massive insight by reading and taking note posts on Twitter, Medium, or Substack (except possibly unless your work is on the cultural anthropology of those platforms).
A lot of the zettelkasten spaces focus heavily on the note taking part of the process and not enough on the quality of what you're reading and how you're reading it. This portion is possibly more valuable than the note taking piece, but the two should be hand-in-glove and work toward something.
I suspect that most people who have 1000 notes know which five or ten are the most important to where they're going and how they're growing. Focus on those and your "conversations with texts" relating to those. The rest is either low level context for where you're headed or either pure noise/digital exhaust.
If you think of ideas as incunables, which notes will be worth of putting on your tombstone? In other words: What are your "tombstone notes"? (See what I did there? I came up with another name for a type of note, a sin for which I'm certainly going to spend a lot of time in zettelkasten purgatory.)
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This is great and yes it makes perfect sense, thank you!The comment on reading is super helpful. As I've mentioned on here before I've come ti PhD straight from industry, so learning these skills from scratch. Reading especially is still tricky for me after a year, and I tend to read too deeply, and try to read whole texts, and then over annotate.It's good to be reminded that this isn't how academic reading works.
reply to Admirable_Discount75 at https://www.reddit.com/r/Zettelkasten/comments/17beucn/comment/k5nzic6/?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=web2x&context=3
If you've not come across it before you'll likely find Adler & Van Doren (1972) for reading a useful place to start, especially their idea of syntopical reading. Umberto Eco (2015) is also a good supplement to a lot of the internet-based and Ahrensian ZK material. After those try Mills.
Adler, Mortimer J., and Charles Van Doren. How to Read a Book: The Classical Guide to Intelligent Reading. Revised and Updated ed. edition. 1940. Reprint, Touchstone, 2011. https://amzn.to/45IjBcV. (audiobook available; or a video synopsis: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y_rizr8bb0c)
Eco, Umberto. How to Write a Thesis. Translated by Caterina Mongiat Farina and Geoff Farina. 1977. Reprint, Cambridge, MA, USA: MIT Press, 2015. https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/how-write-thesis.
Mills, C. Wright. “On Intellectual Craftsmanship (1952).” Society 17, no. 2 (January 1, 1980): 63–70. https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02700062.
Should it help, I often find that audiobook versions of books or coursework sources like The Great Courses (often free at local libraries, through Hoopla, or other sources), or the highest quality material from YouTube/podcasts listened to at 1.5 - 2x speed while you're walking/commuting can give you quick overviews and/or inspectional reads at a relatively low time cost. Short reminder notes/keywords (to search) while listening can then allow you to do fast searches of the actual texts and/or course guidebooks for excerpting and note making afterwards. Highly selective use of the audiobook bookmarking features let you relisten to short portions as necessary.
As an example, one could do a quick crash course/overview of something like Marx and Communism over a week by quickly listening to all or parts of:
- https://www.thegreatcourses.com/courses/the-rise-of-communism-from-marx-to-lenin
- https://www.thegreatcourses.com/courses/communism-in-power-from-stalin-to-mao
- https://www.thegreatcourses.com/courses/legacies-of-great-economists
- https://www.thegreatcourses.com/courses/modern-intellectual-tradition-from-descartes-to-derrida
These in combination with sources like Oxford's: Very Short Introduction series book on Marx (which usually have good bibliographies) would allow you to quickly expand into more specialized "handbooks" (Oxford, Cambridge, Routledge, Sage) on the subject of Marx and from there into even more technical literature and journal articles. Obviously the deeper you go, the slower things may become depending on the depth you're looking to go.
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Knowledge that is excluded from synthesis... .t3_17beucn._2FCtq-QzlfuN-SwVMUZMM3 { --postTitle-VisitedLinkColor: #9b9b9b; --postTitleLink-VisitedLinkColor: #9b9b9b; --postBodyLink-VisitedLinkColor: #989898; } questionOr... what do you all do with expansive lit notes that have been taken from a textbook for future reference and broad understanding of a methodology, rather than for its direct relevance to research and synthesis of new ideas?It's too unwieldly to keep in current form - six chapters of highlighted paras + notes on how I might apply certain approaches, but it resists atomisation/categorisation. Maybe just chapter summaries?Not suggesting there's 'A' way of doing this, but interested in others' approaches to directly applicable/foundational 'textbook' knowledge that is unlikely to evolve.(Someone really should do a PhD in the epistemology of Zettelkasten!)Cheers,Chris
reply to u/Admirable_Discount75 at https://www.reddit.com/r/Zettelkasten/comments/17beucn/knowledge_that_is_excluded_from_synthesis/
What is your purpose/need/desire to turn all this material into individual zettels or atomic ideas? If you've read the material, taken some literature notes, and reviewed them a bit, don't you broadly now know and understand the methodology? If this is the point and you might only need your notes/outline to review occasionally, then there's nothing else you need to do. If you're comparing other similar methodologies and comparing and contrasting them, then perhaps it's worth breaking some of them out into their own zettels to connect to other things you're working on. Perhaps you're going to write your own book on the topic? Then having better notes on the subject is worthwhile. If you don't have a good reason or gut feeling for why you would want or need to do it, taking hundreds of notes from a book and splitting them all into interconnected atomic notes is solely busy work.
It's completely acceptable to just keep your jumble of literature notes next to your bibliographic entry for potential future reference or quick review if necessary. Perhaps you've gotten everything you need from this source without creating any permanent notes? Or maybe only one or two of the hundreds are actually valuable to your potential long term goals?<br /> It's really only the material you feel that is relevant to your longer term goals, research, and synthesis needs that's worthwhile breaking out into permanent notes/zettels.
syndication link: https://www.reddit.com/r/Zettelkasten/comments/17beucn/comment/k5lr0mz/?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=web2x&context=3
Just as Adler and Van Doren (1972) suggest that most books are only worth a quick inspectional read and fewer are worth a deeper, analytical read, most (fleeting) notes, highlights, and annotations you make are only worth their quick scribble while vanishingly few others are worthy of greater expansion and permanent note status. You might also find by extension that some of the most valuable work you'll do is syntopical reading and the creation of high value syntopical notes which you can weave into folgezettel (sequences of notes) that generate new knowledge.
Don't fall into the trap of thinking that everything needs to be a perfect, permanent note. If you're distilling and writing one or two good permanent notes a day, you're killing it; the rest is just sour mash.
As ever, practice to see what works best for your needs.
Tags
- zettelkasten purpose
- tombstone notes
- rubber duck debugging
- zettelkasten therapy
- reply
- literature notes vs. permanent notes
- syntopical reading
- Oxford Very Short Introductions
- morning pages
- Scott P. Scheper
- types of notes
- antinet zettelkasten
- handbooks
- The Great Courses
- zettelkasten advice
- academic reading
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Annotators
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I've been struggling with duplicate notes within my Zettelkasten. .t3_17ajd34._2FCtq-QzlfuN-SwVMUZMM3 { --postTitle-VisitedLinkColor: #9b9b9b; --postTitleLink-VisitedLinkColor: #9b9b9b; --postBodyLink-VisitedLinkColor: #989898; }
reply to u/Flubber78769 at https://www.reddit.com/r/Zettelkasten/comments/17ajd34/ive_been_struggling_with_duplicate_notes_within/
This is the value of actually indexing your content. You can do a quick search around the index entries which provides a natural check against duplication, but importantly it'll let you think about those ideas again and spend your time more profitably by expanding upon them instead.
Occasionally I'll find duplication from one source to the next which provides some support about an idea's value or spread over time, especially when I'm tracking usage of a thing, so it's not always the case that duplication is automatically a bad thing.
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A quote to further @amandamull's excellent research on groupings of three and beverages at work that I saw on the Atlantic archive today: "One [martini] is all right, two is too many, three is not enough."—James Thurber via https://content.time.com/time/subscriber/article/0,33009,939759,00.html
https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2019/08/the-correct-number-of-desk-beverages/595927/
Syndication link: https://twitter.com/ChrisAldrich/status/1714054816715153757
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Should I use zettelkasten? .t3_172ujnk._2FCtq-QzlfuN-SwVMUZMM3 { --postTitle-VisitedLinkColor: #9b9b9b; --postTitleLink-VisitedLinkColor: #9b9b9b; --postBodyLink-VisitedLinkColor: #989898; } questionI am a student in college in the UK studying A levels (Advanced levels), this includes mathematics, biology, chemistry and physics. I dont really take notes for mathematics so I wont be using any type of note taking system for that but for the sciences IDK what to do.
reply to u/Wooden-School-4091 at https://www.reddit.com/r/Zettelkasten/comments/172ujnk/should_i_use_zettelkasten/
This comes up fairly frequently. See https://hypothes.is/users/chrisaldrich?q=tag%3A%27zettelkasten+for+studying%27 and related links for other variations and advice on this theme.
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Zettelkasten courses and teachers
Having someone who is experienced, cares, and knows the entirety of their space can be invaluable to speed you on your way to having at least an idea of the space in general and then give you pointers on your particular practice and needs. There is tremendous amount of ink spilled on the idea of zettelkasten, some of it good, some of it remarkably bad, and most of it painfully generic and useless.
Most of those I know who have serious practices have spent an inordinate amount of time reading and refining to come to where they are. They, and I, would all probably think that a good teacher and class on the subject could have saved them hundreds (thousands?) of hours of time and in exchange for a couple of hundred dollars. How much is your time worth in the balance? Can you read a cheap book or two on the topic? A few blog posts? Certainly, and many have, yet there are still lots of very basic questions which pop up here and elsewhere. Buying a book isn't the end-all either as you've still got to spend the time reading and distilling what's in it. A good instructor can boil down Ahrens' work into twenty minutes and get you up and working a lot more quickly, not to mention distilling down even a fraction of all the other potentially relevant sources.
Most of the questions in this sub-reddit are people asking for pointers either about where to start or examples of specific things they're having trouble with. Of course in the majority of the cases they could simply search this or one or two other sources to find almost exactly what they need, yet here they are posting one of the same 10 questions over and over. (I also generally get the impression that they're only thinking about the system in a theoretical fashion and aren't actually practicing it for themselves.) It's nice to have pointers like the one that u/WM2D2 provides, but how is someone new to the space supposed to find this or other specific sources without the prior knowledge? Simple search is unlikely to uncover the best sources. In my experience, a lot of the best material on zettelkasten practice doesn't even contain the word "zettelkasten" to allow one to find it via search. And what to do if or when it doesn't answer all their questions? Instructors are usually good at distilling down the particulars into a more coherent whole. This is what you're paying for.
Of those who are well-practiced, even fewer have expanded on their own individual practice to look at how others have practiced for a variety of very disparate use cases. Where is this experience to be found? Having looked at and read many sources over the years, it's definitely hard won knowledge. And what about taking the theory and turning it into actual practice? This is where a good teacher will come in handy to help you actually do the work to become better much more rapidly than any book ever could. The rules are easy, it's the practice to turn those rules into a practicable art that is the tougher road.
This being said, there is definitely a spectrum of experience and teaching ability. There are certainly only one or two people I can imagine recommending as a teacher in this specific area. Because this may be some of the most hard won knowledge to come across, I'll mention that u/taurusnoises is one of those I would recommend if you're looking to save your time and come to a useful practice for yourself without spending lots of time floundering around.
written in response to u/IamOkei at https://www.reddit.com/r/Zettelkasten/comments/1728f1n/why_are_people_paying_thousand_of_dollars_on/
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I like paper with "weird" rulings. What's your favorite notebook/company that produces unique/niche paper organization rulings?
reply to u/Seaborn63 at https://www.reddit.com/r/notebooks/comments/170iiax/i_like_paper_with_weird_rulings_whats_your/
Japanese notebooks can have some interesting grids in addition to the Kokyuo notebooks mentioned by others. There are a variety of grid sizes for practicing kana and kanji. You can find many by searching for Genkouyoushi as well as some with alternate gridding which is used for furigana. Some of the more sophisticated adult versions have horizontal lines which also have small hash marks for creating a sort of vertical grid for those who wish it. These are intended for those who write on the page from top to bottom rather than horizontally, but this doesn't mean they couldn't be used in other ways.
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@chrisaldrich thank you for this detailed response about your use of Obsidian and organization for digital Zettelkasten. I am not sure if this is the current forum or discussion to ask this but I would be curious to see how you have integrated or coordinated your analog Zettelkasten and notetaking with what you describe here. I've followed your posts about the use of index cards for a long time. I'd love to see how you use the very different affordances of these environments together.
reply to u/wtagg at https://www.reddit.com/r/Zettelkasten/comments/16wgq4l/comment/k356507/?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=web2x&context=3
Perhaps the easiest way to frame things is that I use my digital note taking as scaffolding in the learning and research process and the zettels in the digital space are the best filtered outcomes from some of that. If you compare my practice to that of Luhmann's one might consider most of my digital practice to be equivalent to his ZKI. Most of my analog practice is more highly focused and deliberate and is more closely limited to a small handful of topics related to my specific areas of research on memory, orality, intellectual history, Indigenous studies, education, anthropology, and mathematics (and is potentially more like Luhmann's ZK II). As a result, in hindsight—thanks for asking—, I'm simultaneously building my ZK I and ZK II instead of switching mid-career the way Luhmann did. But to be clear, a lot of my ZKII material filters (or digests, if you prefer that analogy) its way through the ZKI process along the way.
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I'm a huge fan of digital over paper but what would you want on the custom stationary. A typical paper Zettle has:A unique identifier line or boxA content section (I'd assume that can be most of the front and all the backA related notes section.I'd think a typical 5x7 index card with (3) in the top area, (1) in the lower left and (2) on all the rest does the trick.The main place I could see stationary helping is if you want the identifier to have distinguished sections. For example lots of people are using the Dewey Decimal System or Britanica Propedia classification for simplicity ... while I think Library of Congress classification makes more sense since it is available and agreed by the publisher. You could potentially use both in the ID section.
reply to u/JeffB1517 at https://www.reddit.com/r/Zettelkasten/comments/16ulsye/comment/k2mb8s2/?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=web2x&context=3
I've only seen some modest discussion of DDC and outside of Joseph Voros, vanishingly little discussion (much less usage) of Propædia as classification systems for zettelkasten id numbering. I'm wholly unaware of anyone actively using the Universal Decimal Classification, but would love to see examples of it in action if they exist. From where are you drawing your sampling of "lots of people"? Do you use Library of Congress classification for your own, and if so, can you provide an example of numbers and titles of half a dozen cards to demonstrate your specific method? Given the prevalence of its use in filing/ordering, I'd more likely place the ID at the top of the card over the bottom and put other links at the bottom. Is there a particular affordance that would encourage you to do it the opposite?
Perhaps you're including it in the idea of "related notes", but I also keep a separate reference section on each card for the source or related context of the main idea or excerpted quotation.
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Hi, I just started to use Zettlr for my thoughts, in stead of just individual txt-files. I find it easy to add tags to notes. But if you read manuals how to use ZettelKasten, most seem to advice to link your notes in a meaningful way (and describe the link). Maybe it's because I just really started, but I don't find immediate links when I have a sudden thought. Sometimes I have 2 ideas in the same line, but they're more like siblings, so tagging with the same keyword is more evident. How do most people do this?
reply to u/JonasanOniem at https://www.reddit.com/r/Zettelkasten/comments/16ss0yu/linking_new_notes/
This sort of practice is harder when you start out in most digital apps because there is usually no sense of "closeness" of ideas in digital the way that is implied by physical proximity (or "neighborhood") found in physical cards sitting right next to or around each other. As a result, you have to create more explicit links or rely on using tags (or indexing) when you start. I've not gotten deep into the UI of Zettlr, but some applications allow the numbering (and the way numbered ideas are sorted in the user interface) to allow this affordance by creating a visual sense of proximity for you. As you accumulate more notes, it becomes easier and you can rely less on tags and more on direct links. Eventually you may come to dislike broad categories/tags and prefer direct links from one idea to another as the most explicit tag you could give a note . If you're following a more strict Luhmann-artig practice, you'll find yourself indexing a lot at the beginning, but as you link new ideas to old, you don't need to index (tag) things as heavily because the index points to a card which is directly linked to something in the neighborhood of where you're looking. Over time and through use, you'll come to recognize your neighborhoods and the individual "houses" where the ideas you're working with all live. As an example, Luhmann spent his life working in sociology, but you'll only find a few links from his keyword register/subject index to "sociology" (and this is a good thing, otherwise he'd have had 90,000+ listings there and the index entry for sociology would have been utterly useless.)
Still, given all this, perhaps as taurusnoises suggests, concrete examples may help more, particularly if you're having any issues with the terminology/concepts or how the specific application affordances are being presented.
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danallosso.substack.com danallosso.substack.com
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There are hints here of what Bob Doto was writing about recently with respect to literary theory development, lots of which wouldn't have been seen/known by Adler/Van Doren in 1972. You might appreciate the ideas in intertextuality and rhizomatic philosophy he touches on. There are also hints of connections to Whitney Trettien's work in Cut/Copy/Paste which I'm reminded of as well.
Doto, Bob. “Inspired Destruction: How a Zettelkasten Explodes Thoughts (So You Can Have New Ones).” Writing by Bob Doto (blog), September 13, 2023. https://writing.bobdoto.computer/inspired-destruction-how-a-zettelkasten-explodes-thoughts-so-you-can-have-newish-ones/.
Trettien, Whitney. Cut/Copy/Paste: Fragments from the History of Bookwork. University of Minnesota Press, 2021. https://manifold.umn.edu/projects/cut-copy-paste.
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danallosso.substack.com danallosso.substack.com
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We're getting an "accurate" depiction of their ideas in print, when in an oral culture we'd be getting ideas that may have originated with people in the distant past but have been altered (even if just by curation) in their process of making it to the present to be recited.
There's some interesting work on the "archaeology of orality" which indicates that there's much better continuity of oral traditions than Westerners may admit, in large part because we're only familiar with how our memories are trained versus how oral societies actually operate. Transmission methods are much stronger/better than we might generally think and go back further than our literary records.
Here's an interesting recent article that provides a bit of flavor here: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0305440323000997
And a popular press synopsis: https://www.unimelb.edu.au/newsroom/news/2023/august/tasmanian-aboriginal-oral-traditions-among-the-oldest-recorded-narratives
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I wonder what you think of a distinction between the more traditional 'scholar's box', and the proto-databases that were used to write dictionaries and then for projects such as the Mundaneum. I can't help feeling there's a significant difference between a collection of notes meant for a single person, and a collection meant to be used collaboratively. But not sure exactly how to characterize this difference. Seems to me that there's a tradition that ended up with the word processor, and another one that ended up with the database. I feel that the word processor, unlike the database, was a dead end.
reply to u/atomicnotes at https://www.reddit.com/r/Zettelkasten/comments/16njtfx/comment/k1tuc9c/?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=web2x&context=3
u/atomicnotes, this is an excellent question. (Though I'd still like to come to terms with people who don't think it acts as a knowledge management system, there's obviously something I'm missing.)
Some of your distinction comes down to how one is using their zettelkasten and what sorts of questions are being asked of it. One of the earliest descriptions I've seen that begins to get at the difference is the description by Beatrice Webb of her notes (appendix C) in My Apprenticeship. As she describes what she's doing, I get the feeling that she's taking the same broad sort of notes we're all used to, but it's obvious from her discussion that she's also using her slips as a traditional database, but is lacking modern vocabulary to describe it as such.
Early efforts like the OED, TLL, the Wb, and even Gertrud Bauer's Coptic linguistic zettelkasten of the late 1970s were narrow enough in scope and data collected to make them almost dead simple to define, organize and use as databases on paper. Of course how they were used to compile their ultimate reference books was a bit more complex in form than the basic data from which they stemmed.
The Mundaneum had a much more complex flavor because it required a standardized system for everyone to work in concert against much more freeform as well as more complex forms of collected data and still be able to search for the answers to specific questions. While still somewhat database flavored, it was dramatically different from the others because of it scope and the much broader sorts of questions one could ask of it. I think that if you ask yourself what sorts of affordances you get from the two different groups (databases and word processors (or even their typewriter precursors) you find even more answers.
Typewriters and word processors allowed one to get words down on paper quicker by a magnitude of order or two faster, and in combination with reproduction equipment, made it easier to spin off copies of the document for small scale and local mass distribution a lot easier. They do allow a few affordances like higher readability (compared with less standardized and slower handwriting), quick search (at least in the digital era), and moving pieces of text around (also in digital). Much beyond this, they aren't tremendously helpful as a composition tool. As a thinking tool, typewriters and word processors aren't significantly better than their analog predecessors, so you don't gain a huge amount of leverage by using them.
On the other hand, databases and their spreadsheet brethren offer a lot more, particularly in digital realms. Data collection and collation become much easier. One can also form a massive variety of queries on such collected data, not to mention making calculations on those data or subjecting them to statistical analyses. Searching, sorting, and making direct comparisons also become far easier and quicker to do once you've amassed the data you need. Here again, Beatrice Webb's early experience and descriptions are very helpful as are Hollerinth's early work with punch cards and census data and the speed with which the results could be used.
Now if you compare the affordances by each of these in the digital era and plot their shifts against increasing computer processing power, you'll see that the value of the word processor stays relatively flat while the database shows much more significant movement.
Surely there is a lot more at play, particularly at scale and when taking network effects into account, but perhaps this quick sketch may explain to you a bit of the difference you've described.
Another difference you may be seeing/feeling is that of contextualization. Databases usually have much smaller and more discrete amounts of data cross-indexed (for example: a subject's name versus weight with a value in pounds or kilograms.) As a result the amount of context required to use them is dramatically lower compared to the sorts of data you might keep in an average atomic/evergreen note, which may need to be more heavily recontextualized for you when you need to use it in conjunction with other similar notes which may also need you to recontextualize them and then use them against or with one another.
Some of this is why the cards in the Thesaurus Linguae Latinae are easier to use and understand out of the box (presuming you know Latin) than those you might find in the Mundaneum. They'll also be far easier to use than a stranger's notes which will require even larger contextualization for you, especially when you haven't spent the time scaffolding the related and often unstated knowledge around them. This is why others' zettelkasten will be more difficult (but not wholly impossible) for a stranger to use. You might apply the analogy of context gaps between children and adults for a typical Disney animated movie to the situation. If you're using someone else's zettelkasten, you'll potentially be able to follow a base level story the way a child would view a Disney cartoon. Compare this to the zettelkasten's creator who will not only see that same story, but will have a much higher level of associative memory at play to see and understand a huge level of in-jokes, cultural references, and other associations that an adult watching the Disney movie will understand that the child would completely miss.
I'm curious to hear your thoughts on how this all plays out for your way of conceptualizing it.
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But I’m increasingly inclined to the view that the genius of ZK is the simple fact that it forces its user to continually interact with, and create connections among their thoughts and the thoughts of others.To the extent that’s correct, the work that ZK demands is not a drawback at all. It is in fact ZKs primary benefit; it’s a serious feature and not at all a bug.
reply to u/TeeMcBee and u/taurusnoises at https://www.reddit.com/r/Zettelkasten/comments/16njtfx/comment/k1ic0ot/?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=web2x&context=3
And two more big yeses.
There is a growing amount of literature in the educational social annotation space in which teachers/professors are using it specifically to encourage their students to interact with class material and readings. The mechanics on the front end are exactly the same as in most ZK set ups, the difference is what happens with the annotations one makes.
An entry point into some of this research:
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cathieleblanc.com cathieleblanc.com
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What a lovely example of H5P! I keep my eye open for them floating around in the wild, but don't often see them.
It reminds me of a 1906 advertisement I ran into earlier this year. I should have thought to make my own H5P out of it. https://boffosocko.com/2023/03/09/satelite-combination-card-index-cabinet-and-telephone-stand/
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I’ve been flitting around loads of note taking platforms - each time, I bask in the glory of a new tool then about 3-4 weeks later I’m done.The one lasting tool is Roam, which I still like despite it being tossed aside by many for other tools. I use TickTick for my task management.I’ve recently returned to journaling or writing things down for that I’ve done and what I want to achieve. I still have an online and mobile task list but I really find writing useful for reflecting.Getting into Zettkekasten, I’m about to use a paper card based approach to do a spell of studying. Im looking forward to the analogue experience but almost feel like I’m being disloyal to the modern digital way. I’m looking forward to seeing if this method helps digest the learning and seeing where this takes me.
reply to u/FilterGrad6 at https://www.reddit.com/r/Zettelkasten/comments/16iwdep/newbie/
Digital is just a tool. Why necessarily chose it over analog unless you can specifically identify affordances which dramatically improve your experience or output?
As you've discovered, shiny object syndrome may prevent you from collecting enough into one place to be truly useful and valuable. Pick one that seems to work for you and build from there.
If paper was good enough for the practices and outputs of Carl Linnaeus, Konrad Gessner, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibnitz, John Locke, Hans Blumenberg, Roland Barthes, Beatrice Webb, Jacques Barzun, Niklas Luhmann, Gertrud Bauer, Marcel Mauss, Phyllis Diller, and so many others is there any reason it shouldn't work just as effectively for your work?
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Thank you!, am trying to make sense of what you are suggesting. It sounds like I could put categories, numbers, images, colors, objects, etc around the wheel and place the cards based on those different things.An interesting wheel I found is from the following site. I could make paper triangles like the ones in Figure T for (1) beginning, middle, end, (2) difference, concordance, contrariety, (3) majority, equality, and minority. Other triangular sequences might be possible. In the study of acting, there's also objective-action-obstacle.Still trying to make sense of how I would use the inner concentric circles.
reply to u/DunesNSwoon at https://www.reddit.com/r/Zettelkasten/comments/16ad43u/comment/jzb9ekq/?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=web2x&context=3
The ideas is similar to Marshall Kirkpatrick's triangle thinking (see details here: https://hyp.is/slQufuwwEeyYVz9NwPNInA/thrivingonoverload.com/marshall-kirkpatrick-source-selection-connecting-ideas-diverse-thinking-enabling-serendipity-ep14/), but allows for multiple levels of ideas being juxtaposed simultaneously and then rotated and viewed again. I've not read into the specifics, but you might also appreciate the example of Jackson Mac Low's dance instruction poems entitled The Pronouns: A collection of forty dances for the dancers from 1964. See: https://voiceisalanguage.wordpress.com/2010/04/04/jackson-mac-low/
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Even though I commented earlier i have to side with Chris. A ZK is best suited for argumentative and essay like work, not creative one like poetry.Maybe this is something that we need to discuss as a community as hole: it’s seems that a lot of people try to fit their needs to a system that (in my opinion) it’s neither intended or works for those kinds of projects.
reply to Efficient_Eart_8773 at https://www.reddit.com/r/Zettelkasten/comments/16ad43u/comment/jzaas4l/?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=web2x&context=3
Though depending on your needs and desires, you can really do both to effectuate the outcomes you'd like to have. The secret is knowing which affordances, structures, and methods suit your desired outcomes. (Of course if you're going to dump your box out and do massive rearrangements or take large portions out and want to refile them for other needs, then you're going to have to give them numbers and do that re-filing work.)
I've seen snippets of saved language in Thoreau's journal (commonplace) which were re-used in other parts of his journal which ultimately ended up in a published work. As he didn't seem to have a significant index, one can only guess that he used occasional browsing or random happenstance delving into it to have moved it from one place to another.
As ever, what do you need and what will best get you there?
Link to:<br /> What Got You Here Won't Get You There
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My main purpose for using note-cards is to form lines of poetry into actual poems. Currently it's specifically erotic poetry that I'm writing, so it seems like there is a limited number of categories that I keep coming back to in regards to content: beauty, fashion, movement, relationship, etc, which I've put on the top of my index cards. This is based off of Ryan Holiday and Robert Greene's index card systems. I've also added subcategories: for example, beauty and myth, beauty and plant associations, etc. Going deeper, I might write B-P-F in the corner for Beauty-Plant-Flower, and then have BPF-1, 2, etc. If I organize these alphabetically with tabs, it seems like it would be easy to find the subject I'm looking for at a glance. One problem might be if I want to start making additional notes about which cards stand out for their structure: rhyme, alliteration, etc. Have various ideas for this.My questions are: what is the benefit of having an alphanumeric indexing system where you label subjects with 1, 2, 3, and then going deeper with 1a, 1a1, etc. when it seems like it would be harder to remember that science is #1 and philosophy is #2 vs. just putting science under S and philosophy under P? Is the Zettelkasten (alphanumeric) method better for creating a wide-ranging general knowledge database in a way I'm not realizing? Would there be any benefit for my narrower writing purpose? Any responses are appreciated.
reply to u/DunesNSwoon at https://www.reddit.com/r/Zettelkasten/comments/16ad43u/zettelkasten_alphanumeric_method_vs_alphabetical/
Allow me an iconoclastic view for this subreddit: Given what you've got and your creative use case, I'll recommend you do not do any numbering or ordering at all!
Instead follow the path of philosopher Raymond Llull and create what is sometimes referred to as a Llullian memory wheel. Search for one of his diagrams from the 11th century. Then sift through your cards for interesting ones and place one of your cards at each of the many letters, numbers, words, images, or "things" on the wheels, which were designed to move around a central axis much like a child's cryptographic decoder wheel based on the Caesar cipher. Then move things about combinatorically until you find interesting patterns, rhymes, rhythms, etc. to compose the poetry you're after.
Juxtaposing ideas in random (but structured) ways may help accelerate and amplify your creativity in ways you might not expect.
They meant them to be used on a slower timescale, but Brian Eno and Peter Schmidt's Oblique Strategies are not too dissimilar in their effect. You might find them useful when you're creatively "stuck". As a poet you might also create a mini deck of cards with forms on them (sonnet, rhymed couplets, villanelle, limerick, etc.) to draw from at random and attempt to compose something to fit it. Odd constraints can often be helpful creative tools.
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Love this general set up. The months (12) and days (31) tabs broadly are similar to a 43 folders set up as well. I've written a bit about the history of similar productivity systems which are based in index cards for those exploring/experimenting with various methods and potential outcomes: https://boffosocko.com/2023/03/09/the-memindex-method-an-early-precursor-of-the-memex-hipster-pda-43-folders-gtd-basb-and-bullet-journal-systems/
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forum.zettelkasten.de forum.zettelkasten.de
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Personally I often used #type/sketchnote and #type/question. But I will spend a little time and effort to build up an improved architecture for tagging.
reply to Edmund at https://forum.zettelkasten.de/discussion/comment/18550/#Comment_18550
@Edmund since I don't do such a thing myself, I'm curious what sort of affordance your #type/NoteName tagging provides you with (especially if you're using more than just those two)? Do you use them regularly for search or filtering, and if so for what reason? How does it help?
To me it look likes extra metadata/work, but without a lot of direct long term value in exchange. Does doing this for long periods of time provide you with outsized emergent value of some sort that's not easy to see from the start?
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Hipster PDA phone case .t3_jjlkh3._2FCtq-QzlfuN-SwVMUZMM3 { --postTitle-VisitedLinkColor: #9b9b9b; --postTitleLink-VisitedLinkColor: #9b9b9b; --postBodyLink-VisitedLinkColor: #989898; } Advice neededAre there nany phone cases that can store some index cards (and preferably a pen)? I need one because I often forget to bring my Hipster PDA, while I almost never forget to bring my phone.
reply to u/smaczek at https://www.reddit.com/r/notebooks/comments/jjlkh3/hipster_pda_phone_case/
If you or others are still looking, I've been using an A6 Flatty case which easily fits several dozen 4x6" index cards along with my phone and a pen. It's probably a better hand carry (esp. with a pen inside), but will fit into my back pocket. Details:
https://boffosocko.com/2023/04/20/review-of-king-jim-a6-size-horizontal-flatty-works-case-5460/
Alternately, I've looked at Rickshaw Bags' Traveler's Notebook case for this as well: https://www.rickshawbags.com/travelers-notebook-case
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forum.zettelkasten.de forum.zettelkasten.de
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light-enables-creation
This looks like the sort of structure note I might often make as I am a day or two into a literature review for a new area. It definitely helps to scaffold new ideas and identify specific areas which I may want to delve into more specifically. It's definitely been useful for me to begin linking things into other portions of my ZK to find areas of overlap with these new areas, so it's great to see you doing that with your Prometheus note already.
Coming from the science area you may want to look at cells or animals with autofluorescence or areas like green fluorescent protein (GFP) if that is of interest in the area of creatures which produce their own light.
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BookmarkTypes and uses of PKM
Almost every well known writer/composer/creative throughout history had some sort of note taking or knowledge system of one sort or another (florilegium, commonplace books, notebooks, diaries, journals, zettelkasten, waste books, mnemonic techniques, etc.), which would put them into your "active" category. I think you'd be hard put to come up with evidence of a "sudden" emergence of an "active" PKM system beyond the choice of individual users to actively do something with their collections or not.
If you want to go more distant than Eminem, try looking closely at Ramon Llull's practice in the 11th century, or Homer in the c. 8th century BCE. Or to go much, much farther back, there's solid evidence that indigenous peoples in Australia had what you call both passive and active PKM systems as far back as 65,000 years ago. These are still in use today. Naturally these were not written, but used what anthropologists call orality. (See Walter Ong, Milman Parry, Lynne Kelly, Margo Neale, Duane Hamacher, et al.)
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forum.zettelkasten.de forum.zettelkasten.de
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BookmarkZettelkasten for historical research?
@pgrhowarth @MartinBB @tevka and other historians (and sociologists, anthropologists, humanists, etc.) who want to delve into some of the ideas of historical method, zettelkasten, note taking, intellectual craftsmanship outside of Luhmann's version, I've compiled a list of various primary sources who have written on a variety of related methods throughout the past few hundred years: https://www.zotero.org/chrisaldrich/tags/note%20taking%20methods/items/KTZXN3EV/item-list
Historians in particular have used indexing their notes as a means of creating analog databases for individual facts outside of their other writing/compiling practices. Thus a mixture of methods may suit your working needs.
To help frame it one might also consult the following: * Thomas, Keith. “Diary: Working Methods.” London Review of Books, June 10, 2010. https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v32/n11/keith-thomas/diary. * Blair, Ann M. Too Much to Know: Managing Scholarly Information before the Modern Age. Yale University Press, 2010. https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300165395/too-much-know.
I've got a relatively short overview of some of these methods and examples of users at https://boffosocko.com/2022/10/22/the-two-definitions-of-zettelkasten/.
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Zettelkasten for Normies: What Normies Really Need to Know .t3_15sqiq2._2FCtq-QzlfuN-SwVMUZMM3 { --postTitle-VisitedLinkColor: #9b9b9b; --postTitleLink-VisitedLinkColor: #9b9b9b; --postBodyLink-VisitedLinkColor: #989898; }
reply to u/SunghoYahng at https://www.reddit.com/r/Zettelkasten/comments/15sqiq2/zettelkasten_for_normies_what_normies_really_need/
u/SunghoYahng, some of your article sounds like a pared down digital version of a commonplace book which allows for links, so it fits into the older zettelkasten tradition, just not into the more Luhmann-artig version on which this subreddit is generally more focused. Perhaps yours is closer to a digital version of the analog commonplace using index cards that Billy Oppenheimer describes having learned from Ryan Holiday and Robert Greene?
Often people focus too much on Luhmann's prodigious output and then immediately imply or say you should adopt his very specific system without describing what his system did or why it worked so well for him and his particular needs. Very few focus on what it is that they want to accomplish and how they might use his system or the thousands of variations on it throughout history to come to those goals as quickly and easily as they can.
You commit a version of this sin in your opening lines:
The content about Zettelkasten is mostly too long and practically useless. The purpose of this text is to write only what normies really need to know.
Who are these so-called "normies" and what specifically are they trying to accomplish? You don't define either of them, and possibly worse do it in a negative framing. The system you're describing might be a great one, but for whom? What do you expect them to use it for? What will they get out of it?
Many people talk about the "magic" of a zettelkasten and then wave their hands at some version of a workflow of what they think it is or what they think it should be. Perhaps what we all really need is a list of potential affordances that different methods allow and how one might leverage those affordances. How might they be mixed and matched? Then users can decide what outcomes they wish to have (writing, thinking, aggregation, bookmarking, collecting, creativity, artificial memory, serendipity, productivity, wiki, spaced repetition, learning, time wasting, etc., etc.) and which affordances are necessary within their workflow/system to effectuate those specific goals? Finally they can pick and choose a specific version of a methodology/workflow and either an analog substrate (index cards, notebooks, memory palace, etc.) or digital tool/application (Obsidian, Roam Research, The Archive, etc.) to save it all in. Of course once you've chosen that analog or digital tool, does it actually have the affordances you want or need in actual practice? Are they easy to use? Practical? Do they save you time? Are they simple or over-engineered? What happens when they scale to a year of regular use or even a lifetime?
As a simple example, many writers would love a seriously good outliner functionality in their system to pull out the materials they want to work with and then appropriately order them for a potential final written output. In practice, index cards on a big table are fantastic for this process while most (all?) current digital tools are miserable at it. And of course once you've gotten the outline you like in an analog space you have to type it all out to print/publish in a final form, something which the digital affordance of cut and paste would make much simpler. Who wouldn't love a tool that could give you all of these affordances, presuming you needed them?
While we're on outlining, very few talk about the ease-of-use that some professional outliners like Dave Winer's Drummer or Little Outliner have versus some of the more text-editing focused tools like Obsidian which are generally poor as outliners (if you could even call them that) in comparison.
If you're interested in folgezettel and outlining, you might appreciate some subtleties in Bob's piece: https://writing.bobdoto.computer/folgezettel-is-not-an-outline-luhmanns-playful-appreciation-of-disfunction/
cross reference https://hypothes.is/a/OhcWSjxyEe6V8DP9P6WNQQ
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Why is the index card half full?
reply to u/ManuelRodriguez331 at https://www.reddit.com/r/Zettelkasten/comments/15ehcy5/why_is_the_index_card_half_full/
There has been debate about the length of notes on slips since the invention of slips and it shows no signs of coming to broad consensus other than everyone will have their personal opinion.
If you feel that A6 is is too big then go down a step in size to A7. One of the benefits of the DIN A standard is that you can take the next larger card size and fold it exactly in half to have the next size smaller. This makes it easier to scale up the size of your cards if you prefer most of them to be smaller to save space, just take care not to allow larger folded cards to "taco" smaller cards in a way they're likely to get lost. If you really needed more space, you could easily use an A1 or A2 and fold it down to fit inside of your collection! (Sadly 4x6 and 3x5 cards don't have this affordance.)
Fortunately there are a variety of available sizes, so you can choose what works best for yourself. Historically some chose large 5x8", 6x9", or even larger "slips". Some have also used different sizes for different functions. For example some use 3x5 for bibliographic cards and 4x6 for day-to-day ideas. I've seen stacked wooden card catalog furniture that had space for 3x5, 4x6, and 8.5x11 in separate drawers within the same cabinet. Some manufacturers even made their furniture modular to make this sort of mixed use even easier.
One of the broadly used pieces of advice that does go back centuries is to use "cards of the same size" (within a particular use case). This consensus is arrived at to help users from losing smaller cards between larger/taller cards. Cards of varying sizes, even small ones, are also much more difficult to sort through. Slight of hand magicians will be aware of the fact that shaving small fractions of length off of playing cards is an easy way of not only marking them, but of executing a variety of clever shuffling illusions as well as finding some of them very quickly by feel behind the back. Analog zettelkasten users will only discover that smaller, shorter cards are nearly guaranteed to become lost among the taller cards. It's for this reason that I would never recommend one to mix 4x6, A6, or even the very closely cut Exacompta Bristol cards, which are neither 4x6 nor A6!
I once took digital notes and printed them on paper and then cut them up to fit the size of the individual notes to save on space and paper. I can report that doing this was a painfully miserable experience and positively would NOT recommend doing this for smaller projects much less lifelong ones. Perhaps this could be the sort of chaos someone out there might actually manage to thrive within, but I suspect it would be a very rare individual.
As for digital spacing, you may win out a bit here for "saving" paper space, but you're also still spending on storage costs in electronic formatting which historically doesn't have the longevity of physical formats. Digital also doesn't offer the ease of use of laying cards out on a desktop and very quickly reordering them for subsequent uses.
There are always tradeoffs, one just need be aware of them to guide choices for either how they want to work or how they might work best.
Personally, I use 4x6" cards because I often write longer paragraphs on them. Through experimentation I found that I would end up using two or more 3x5 cards more often than I would have had mostly blank 4x6 cards and used that to help drive my choice. I also find myself revisiting old cards and adding to them (short follow ups, links to other cards, or other metadata) and 3x5 wouldn't allow that as easily.
As ever, YMMV...
See also: [[note lengths]] and/or [[note size]].
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Isn’t it too much time and energy consuming? I’m not provoking, I’m genuine.
reply to IvanCyb at https://www.reddit.com/r/antinet/comments/1587onp/comment/jt8zbu4/?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=web2x&context=3 Asking broadly about indexing methods in zettelkasten
When you begin you'll find yourself creating lots of index entries to start, in part because you have none, but you'll find with time that you need to do less and less because index entries already exist for most of what you would add. More importantly most of the entries you might consider duplicating are likely to be very near cards that already have those index entries.
As an example if you have twenty cards on cultural anthropology, the first one will be indexed with "cultural anthropology" to give you a pointer of where to start. Then when you need to add a new card to that section, you'll look up "cultural anthropology" and skim through what you've got to find the closest related card and place it. You likely won't need to create a new index entry for it at all.
But for argument's sake, let's say you intend to do some work at the intersection of "cultural anthropology" and "writing" and this card is also about "writing". Then you might want to add an index entry for "writing" from which you'll branch off in the future. This will tend to keep your index very sparse. As an example you can look at Niklas Luhmann's digitized collection to notice that he spent his career in the area of "sociology" but there are only just a few pointers from his index into his collection under that keyword. If he had tagged every single card related to "sociology" as "sociology" in his index, the index entry for it would have been wholly unusable in just a few months. Broadly speaking his entire zettelkasten is about sociology, so you need to delve a few layers in and see which subtopics, sub-subtopics, sub-sub-subtopics, etc. exist. As you go deeper into specific topics you'll notice that you branch down and out into more specific subareas as you begin to cover all the bases within that topic. If you like, for fun, you can see this happening in my digital zettelkasten on the topic of "zettelkasten" at https://hypothes.is/users/chrisaldrich?q=tag%3A%22zettelkasten%22. The tool only shows the top 50 tags for that subject in the side bar, but you can slowly dig down into subtopics to see what they look like and a bit of how they begin to overlap.
Incidentally, this is one of the problems with those who tag everything with top level topic headings in digital contexts—you do a search for something important and find so much that it becomes a useless task to try to sift through it all. As a result, users need better tools to give them the ability to do more fine-grained searching, filtering, and methods of discovery.
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I'm using LaTeX to create my Zettel notes. .t3_158gy35._2FCtq-QzlfuN-SwVMUZMM3 { --postTitle-VisitedLinkColor: #9b9b9b; --postTitleLink-VisitedLinkColor: #9b9b9b; --postBodyLink-VisitedLinkColor: #989898; }
reply to u/AndreSanch at https://www.reddit.com/r/Zettelkasten/comments/158gy35/im_using_latex_to_create_my_zettel_notes/
This sort of thing has certainly been done before by many. Be careful of going overboard.
If you don't already have a list of most of the common LaTeX math symbols, here's a good starter list, but make sure that your assigned meaning to them from an argumentation perspective is either "standard" or you've written it down for later use/memory. (There's nothing worse than a 10 year old note whose symbols you no longer remember.)
If you haven't done a course in philosophy or logic (something along the lines of Elements of Logic), then that may also help you in terms of many of the common uses/meanings, though there are a variety of meanings to various symbols through time, so take care.
Scribes and scholars over time have used a variety of symbols and annotations to mean various things, some of which were standardized in various contexts. For more on this take a look at some of Evina Stein's work and research on historic texts. Some of this might include:
Steinová, Evina. “Nota and Require. The Oldest Western Annotation Symbols and Their Dissemination in the Early Middle Ages.” Scribes and the Presentation of Texts (from Antiquity to c. 1550). Proceedings of the 20th Colloquium of the Comité International de Paléographie Latine, 2021, 473–89. https://doi.org/10.1484/M.BIB-EB.5.124987.<br /> ———. Notam Superponere Studui: The Use of Annotation Symbols in the Early Middle Ages. Brepols, 2019.<br /> Steinova, Evina. “Technical Signs in Early Medieval Manuscripts Copied in Irish Minuscule.” In The Annotated Book in the Early Middle Ages: Practices of Reading and Writing, edited by M. J. Teeuwen and I. Van Renswoude, 37–85. Brepols, 2017.
For those interested in scratching the surface of some possibilities and history, I might recommend:
Scheinerman, Edward R. Mathematical Notation: A Guide for Engineers and Scientists. CreateSpace, 2011.
Your note about Forte, while cute and clever doesn't necessarily mean that he's an old man, however, so take care about your propositions and what you draw from them or else your system won't hold up for long.
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Overloaded with notes .t3_15218d5._2FCtq-QzlfuN-SwVMUZMM3 { --postTitle-VisitedLinkColor: #9b9b9b; --postTitleLink-VisitedLinkColor: #9b9b9b; --postBodyLink-VisitedLinkColor: #989898; } A few years ago I moved from Evernote to Obsidian. Evernote had this cool web clipper feature that helped me gather literary quotes, tweets, Wikipedia facts, interview bits, and any kinds of texts all around the web. And now I have a vault with 10k notes.I am trying to review a few every time I open Obsidian (add tags, link it, or delete) but it is still too much.Did someone have the same experience? How did you manage to fix everything and move to a bit more controllable system (zettelkasten or any other)?Cus I feel like I am standing in front of a text tsunami
reply to u/posh-and-repressed at https://www.reddit.com/r/ObsidianMD/comments/15218d5/overloaded_with_notes/
Overwhelm of notes always reminds me of this note taking story from 1908: https://boffosocko.com/2022/10/24/death-by-zettelkasten/ If you've not sorted them, tagged/categorized them or other, then search is really your only recourse. One of the benefits of Luhmann's particular structure is that it nudged him to read and review through older cards as he worked and filed new ones. Those with commonplace books would have occasionally picked up their notebooks and paged through them from time to time. Digital methods like Obsidian don't always do a good job of allowing or even forcing this review work on the user, so you may want to look at synthetic means like one of the random note plugins. Otherwise don't worry too much. Fix your tagging/categorizing/indexing now so that things slowly improve in the future. (I'm sitting on a pile of over 50K notes without the worry of overwhelm, primarily as I've managed to figure out how to rely on my index and search.)
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Evernote as a business seems to have problems
For those who are Obsidian users, earlier today they released a plugin for converting/importing one's Evernote notes as markdown files: https://obsidian.md/plugins?id=obsidian-importer
See also: https://obsidian.md/blog/free-your-notes/
Those who don't use Obsidian might consider using it temporarily to convert their files to markdown (.md) format for use in other programs.
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Is there any app like Obsidian for visual (art) research?
reply to u/gate18 at https://www.reddit.com/r/ObsidianMD/comments/14ve4gi/is_there_any_app_like_obsidian_for_visual_art/
Aby Warburg had a significant physical card-based zettelkasten he used for his visual research in the early 1900s. Perhaps you'd find some interesting inspiration by looking at his methods?
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Converting Commonplace Books? .t3_14v2ohz._2FCtq-QzlfuN-SwVMUZMM3 { --postTitle-VisitedLinkColor: #9b9b9b; --postTitleLink-VisitedLinkColor: #9b9b9b; --postBodyLink-VisitedLinkColor: #989898; }
reply to u/ihaveascone at https://www.reddit.com/r/Zettelkasten/comments/14v2ohz/converting_commonplace_books/
Don't convert unless you absolutely need to, it will be a lot of soul-crushing make work. Since some of your practice already looks like Ross Ashby's system, why not just continue what you've been doing all along and start a physical index card-based index for your commonplaces? (As opposed to a more classical Lockian index.) As you browse your commonplaces create index cards for topics you find and write down the associated book/page numbers. Over time you'll more quickly make your commonplace books more valuable while still continuing on as you always have without skipping much a beat or attempting to convert over your entire system. Alternately you could do a paper notebook with a digital index too. I came across https://www.indxd.ink, a digital, web-based index tool for your analog notebooks. Ostensibly allows one to digitally index their paper notebooks (page numbers optional). It emails you weekly text updates, so you've got a back up of your data if the site/service disappears. This could potentially be used by those who have analog commonplace/zettelkasten practices, but want the digital search and some back up of their system.
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How do you use pocket sized notebooks? .t3_14to50w._2FCtq-QzlfuN-SwVMUZMM3 { --postTitle-VisitedLinkColor: #9b9b9b; --postTitleLink-VisitedLinkColor: #9b9b9b; --postBodyLink-VisitedLinkColor: #989898; }
reply to u/peaberryxo at https://www.reddit.com/r/notebooks/comments/14to50w/how_do_you_use_pocket_sized_notebooks/
I generally carry one all the time and use it as a convenient "waste book". I quickly collect fleeting ideas or notes throughout the day so I don't forget the tidbits that are important. When I'm back at my desk or at the end of the day/week, I will transfer things into my calendar/planner, my primary to do list, copy out more fleshed out ideas or quotes into my commonplace book or add particular ideas and sources to my zettelkasten. It's really there for quick convenience and nothing more. If it's important it always goes somewhere else.
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Inserting a maincards with lack of memory .t3_14ot4na._2FCtq-QzlfuN-SwVMUZMM3 { --postTitle-VisitedLinkColor: #9b9b9b; --postTitleLink-VisitedLinkColor: #9b9b9b; --postBodyLink-VisitedLinkColor: #989898; } Lihmann's system of inserting a maincard is fundamentally based on a person's ability to remember there are other maincards already inserted that would be related to the card you want to insert.What if you have very poor memory like many people do, what is your process of inserting maincards?In my Antinet I handled it in an enhanced method from what I did in my 27 yrs of research notebooks which is very different then Lihmann's method.
reply to u/drogers8 at https://www.reddit.com/r/antinet/comments/14ot4na/inserting_a_maincards_with_lack_of_memory/
I would submit that your first sentence is wildly false.
What topic(s) cover your newly made cards? Look those up in your index and find where those potentially related cards are (whether you remember them or not). Go to that top level card listed in your index and see what's there or in the section of cards that come after it. Find the best card in that branch and file your new card(s) as appropriate. If necessary, cross-index them with sub-topics in your index to make them more findable in the future. If you don't find one or more of those topics in your index, then create a new branch and start an index entry for one or more of those terms. (You'll find yourself making lots of index entries to start, but it will eventually slow down—though it shouldn't stop—as your collection grows.)
Ideally, with regular use, you'll likely remember more and more, especially for active areas you're really interested in. However, take comfort that the system is designed to let you forget everything! This forgetting will actually help create future surprise as well as serendipity that will actually be beneficial for potentially generating new ideas as you use (and review) your notes.
And if you don't believe me, consider that Alberto Cevolini edited an entire book, broadly about these techniques—including an entire chapter on Luhmann—, which he aptly named Forgetting Machines!
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"I keep a dated diary of sorts on index cards, though they rarely go past one card a day."This is something I haven't heard of before. So, you journal/diary on index cards, one per day?
reply to u/taurusnoises (Bob Doto) at tk
Yep, for almost a full year now on 4x6" index cards. (Receipts for the kids: https://boffosocko.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/wp-1688411021709-scaled.jpg)
Previously I'd used a Hobonichi Cousin (page per day) journal for this. (Perhaps I should have stayed with the A6 size instead of the larger A5 for consistency?) Decades ago (around 1988ish?) I had started using a 2 page per day DayTimer pocket planners (essentially pre-printed/timed index cards spiral bound into monthly booklets which they actually shipped in index card-like plastic boxes for storage/archival purposes). Technically I've been doing a version of this for a really long time in one form or another.
It generally includes a schedule, to do lists (bullet journal style), and various fleeting notes/journaling similar to the older Memindex format, just done on larger cards for extra space. I generally either fold them in half for pocket storage for the day or carry about in groups for the coming week(s) when I'm away from my desk for extended periods (also with custom blank index card notebooks/pads).
I won't go into the fact that in the 90's I had a 5,000+ person rolodex... or an index card (in the entertainment they called them buck slips) with the phone numbers and names of \~100 people I dealt with regularly when early brick cell phones didn't have great (or any) storage/functionality.
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reply to Bob Doto at https://www.reddit.com/r/Zettelkasten/comments/14lcb4z/using_diaries_and_journals_as_source_material_for/
Ross Ashby kept his notes in notebooks/journals but he did cross-index them by topic using index cards. Rather than reference them by notebook (name/title/date) and page number, he kept a set of handwritten running page numbers across the entirety of his notebooks, so instead of Notebook 15 page 55, 1952 he'd simply write "3786" for page 3786. This can be seen on his index card for the indexed word "determinate" as an example.
For other examples, see: http://www.rossashby.info/journal/index/index.html
My own notebooks are usually titled by year and date spans along with page numbers, so I'll use those roughly as Bob describes. This has made it much easier to not need to move all my older notes into a card-based system, but still make them useable and referenceable.
For those with more explicit journaling, diary, or other writing habits, Ralph Waldo Emmerson makes an interesting example of practice as he maintained at least two commonplace books (a poetry-specific one and a general one) as well as a large set of writing journals where he experimented with writing before later publishing his work. Since there are extant (digitized and published copies) and large bodies of scholarship around them, they make an interesting case study of how his process worked and how others might imitate it.
On the diary front, of the historical examples I've seen floating around, only Roland Barthes had a significant practice of keeping his "diary" in index card form, a portion of which was published on October 12, 2010. Mourning Diary is a collection published for the first time from Roland Barthes' 330 index cards focusing on his mourning following the death of his mother in 1977.
Not as extensive, Vladimir Nabokov recorded a "diary" of sixty-four dreams on 118 index cards beginning on October 14, 1964 as an experiment. He was following the instructions of John Dunne, a British philosopher, in An Experiment with Time. The results were published by Princeton University Press in Insomniac Dreams: Experiments with Time by Vladimir Nabokov which was edited by Gennady Barabtarlo.
Presumably if one keeps a diary or journal in index card form in chronological order, they can simply reference it by date and either time or card X of Y, if there are multiple card entries for a single day. I keep a dated diary of sorts on index cards, though they rarely go past one card a day.
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CPB vs Reading Notes .t3_14li1ri._2FCtq-QzlfuN-SwVMUZMM3 { --postTitle-VisitedLinkColor: #9b9b9b; --postTitleLink-VisitedLinkColor: #9b9b9b; --postBodyLink-VisitedLinkColor: #989898; } Does anyone separate their reading notes from their common place Notebook? I’ve always used a notebook to combine my Bullet Journal, reading notes, and Common Place. It’s been a mesh of words and I’ve been ok w that, but I just got the Remarkable 2 and I’m trying to figure out how to set it up. Any ideas?
reply to u/Nil205 at https://www.reddit.com/r/commonplacebook/comments/14li1ri/cpb_vs_reading_notes/
I have a similar and differently formed, but still simple system compared to most here. Rather than a traditional commonplace book, I keep all my notes on index cards. I keep all my reading notes for a particular book on a series of index cards that I staple together with a citation card for the book and then file them by author and title.
When I'm done, I'll excerpt the most important parts each individual note (highlight/annotation) and expand on them on its own index card which I file away and index. In your case you might equivalently have a reading notebook where you might keep a section of notes as you read a book and then excerpt the most important or salient parts into your main commonplace. Some may prefer, especially if they own the book in question, to annotate (put their reading notes into) the book directly and then excerpt either as they go or at the end when they're done and can frame their ideas with a broader knowledge of the area in question. Sometimes at later dates you may realize you read something useful which you don't find in your commonplace book, but you can find the gist of it in your reading notes which you can reference, refresh your memory, and then excerpt into your commonplace.
For more on my sort of card index or zettelkasten (German: slip box) practice you might take a look at one or more of the following which explain the broad generalities:
- Eco, Umberto. How to Write a Thesis. Translated by Caterina Mongiat Farina and Geoff Farina. 1977. Reprint, Cambridge, MA, USA: MIT Press, 2015. https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/how-write-thesis.
- Ahrens, Sönke. How to Take Smart Notes: One Simple Technique to Boost Writing, Learning and Thinking – for Students, Academics and Nonfiction Book Writers. Create Space, 2017.
- Allosso, Dan, and S. F. Allosso. How to Make Notes and Write. Minnesota State Pressbooks, 2022. https://minnstate.pressbooks.pub/write/.
- Goutor, Jacques. The Card-File System of Note-Taking. Approaching Ontario’s Past 3. Toronto: Ontario Historical Society, 1980. http://archive.org/details/cardfilesystemof0000gout.
- Tietze, Christian. “Getting Started: Zettelkasten Method.” Blog/forum. Zettelkasten, 2015. https://zettelkasten.de/posts/overview/.
If it's useful/inspiring as an example, Ross Ashby had a lifelong series of notebooks, much like a commonplace, and a separate card index where he cross-indexed all of his ideas to make them more easily searchable, findable, and cross referenceable. You can see digitized versions of the journals and index online which you can explore at http://www.rossashby.info/journal/index.html.
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Anyone here use a method like Pile of Index Cards? .t3_7wtz59._2FCtq-QzlfuN-SwVMUZMM3 { --postTitle-VisitedLinkColor: #9b9b9b; --postTitleLink-VisitedLinkColor: #9b9b9b; --postBodyLink-VisitedLinkColor: #989898; }
It's been a while since this was asked, but in case folks stumbling across it are interested, there are a few useful examples and resources: - Original Pile of Index Cards set up: https://www.flickr.com/photos/hawkexpress/albums/72157594200490122/ (Be sure to click on some of the example card photos which have descriptions of set up/use.) - 43 tabs: https://web.archive.org/web/20110714192833/http://pileofindexcards.org/wiki/index.php?title=43Tabs_System - Lifehacker Article: https://lifehacker.com/the-pile-of-index-cards-system-efficiently-organizes-ta-1599093089 - Uncluterer: https://web.archive.org/web/20140708133632/http://unclutterer.com/2014/06/17/the-pile-of-index-cards-poic-system/ - Some historical systems (esp. Memindex which preceded the PoIC): https://boffosocko.com/2023/03/09/the-memindex-method-an-early-precursor-of-the-memex-hipster-pda-43-folders-gtd-basb-and-bullet-journal-systems/
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Zk for analyzing components
reply to u/graidan at https://www.reddit.com/r/Zettelkasten/comments/14n5131/zk_for_analyzing_components/
I'm intending to use some of my zk for analysis of components for their uses. Specifically, for looking at materia magica (magical ingredients) across authors / books / systems / etc. For example, all the ways that dandelion is used, looking for consistent commonalities and reasoning.
How would you do this in a ZK system? Create a branch per items under investigation? I feel like a digital solution like notion might work best, but I'd like to incorporate into my analog if I can figure out a good way to do it.
I like u/taurusnoises' description and understand it, but perhaps an alternate perspective and some examples of how others have done these things may be helpful?
One feature/affordance that a Luhmann-esque zettelkasten emphasizes is the ability to build on knowledge from the bottom up while older commonplace book and non-Luhmann zettelkasten traditions have a more top-down and/or categorical-first approach. Either of these methods can be tried in your use case to good benefit, but it helps to think about what is happening over the long run. Bottom up approaches are more useful when you're encountering new material and aren't always sure how to categorize it or know where things may be heading. These also tend to encourage greater admixtures of disparate topics, especially over use with time. Top down approaches are potentially better when you've got a broad idea of fields and sub-fields to begin with and know exactly where new ideas will best fit. Because of this they don't naturally tend to mix disparate fields of knowledge as easily, though this can be done with foresight.
It sounds like you're well-acquainted with your area (of magical ingredients) already, so you're more likely to appreciate a top down approach as a result. A Luhmann-esque zettelkasten is certainly workable here, but you'll be able to scaffold some of your material more easily from the start. You know in advance some of the structure of where you're going and what sorts of questions you'll want to ask of your notes, so you can structure it to be more helpful from the start.
As an example, in your materia magica case (for which I'll make some broad assumptions without any knowledge of the field), you might have a branch for dandelion. Under dandelion you can aggregate notes on what various authors have to say about specific uses and features. Over time you'll have a variety of notes which will allow you to quickly compare and contrast what those authors have to say about the topic. You can repeat this for other herbs, mushrooms, etc. This may make your writing on this particular area much easier.
Of course, potential complications may occur later when you may have different questions about the ideas you've collected. Perhaps you'll ask something like, how did practices differ in different geographical areas? Was practice with dandelions the same across different regions or across time? Did practices for other herbs show similar patterns? This may require additional sets of notes which can cross reference time spans and areas. To better handle this with your initial notes branching according to herbs, you may want to make project notes (maps of content, hub notes, structure notes, or whatever you want to call them) on each of these criteria with links back to the originals for studying and comparing these differences.
To make this easier, you can pull out all the original notes and reorder them accordingly and then make your project notes by noting the original card identifiers/numbers. Or perhaps you just use them to write the particular section directly. Once you're done, you can use the original numbers to file them back into the appropriate places for later use.
The broader ZK community doesn't talk as frequently or as in-depth about adding metadata relating to time, place, etc. for sorting/resorting or searching for material. Having actual index cards may make doing all of this a lot easier.
As illustrative examples, Beatrice Webb talks a bit about her use of collecting notes/data across a variety of dimensions for her sociology work as "scientific notetaking" in Appendix C of her book My Apprenticeship (1926). Broadly speaking, she's using her notes as an early form of searchable database. Similarly, Victor Margolin has a short video about his process for writing about history of design and there he's using his notes along the lines of both location as well as time. In both of these examples, we're looking at non-Luhmann-artig practices (somehow it seems more appropriate to use the German -artig than the French -esque), but I'm sure they would have worked just as well with a Luhmann structured practice as well.
And of course if none of this still makes any sense, I highly recommend you try it anyway. Your experience will assuredly bear out results and you're sure to find the answers you're looking for, and probably a little more to boot. Let us know what you find.
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I just can't get into these sort of high-ritual triage approaches to note-taking. I can admire it from afar, which I do, but find this sort of "consider this ahead of time before you make a move" approaches to really drag down my process.But, I do appreciate them from a sort of "aesthetics of academia" perspective.
Reply to Bob Doto at https://www.reddit.com/r/Zettelkasten/comments/14ikfsy/comment/jplo3j2/?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=web2x&context=3 with respect to PZ Compass Points.
I'll agree wholeheartedly that applying methods like this to each note one takes is a "make work" exercise. It's apt to encourage people into the completist trap of turning every note they take into some sort of pristine so-called permanent or evergreen note, and there are already too many of those practitioners, who often give up in a few weeks wondering "where did I go wrong?".
It's useful to know that these methods and tools exist, particularly for younger students, but I would never recommend that one apply them on a daily or even weekly basis. Maybe if one was having trouble with a particular idea or thought and wanted to more exhaustively explore the adjacent space around it, but even here going out for a walk in nature and allowing diffuse thinking to do some of the work is likely to be just as (maybe more?) productive.
It could be the sort of thing to write down in your collection of Oblique Strategies to pull out when you're hitting a wall?
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BookmarkNew book - Personal Knowledge Graphs, by Ivo Velitchkov
For some additional context the work can be found through https://personalknowledgegraphs.com/#/page/pkg. It also has portions of the building of the book which exist as a knowledge graph, though it doesn't appear that they put up the entirety of the book as a linked knowledge graph the way they had initially planned. I've read a few parts in draft form, including Flancian's chapter whose ideas are tremendous, but I have yet to read the remainder of the published work.
[Disclosure: I had submitted and had been accepted to write an early, historical-flavored chapter for this volume, but ultimately fell out, as did many others, over disagreements regarding their editing and/or publishing process. I'm close with Flancian and appreciate his experimental programming work on https://anagora.org/index, which one might call a multi-layered wiki of personal wikis, commonplace books, zettelkasten, diaries, notes, and other similar forms of personal knowledge. If you've got a public, digitally available version of a zettelkasten you'd like to add to his project, do reach out to him to interconnect it with the Agora and others' work there.]
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Personal Website
reply to u/GlitteringFee1047 at https://www.reddit.com/r/Zettelkasten/comments/147yj2b/personal_website/
I've got a personal site at https://boffosocko.com which I've had for many years and used in part as a digital commonplace book/pseudo-zettelkasten. I've been an active member of the IndieWeb community for many years as well and happy to answer any questions about those experiences. To bring things closer to the overlap of that and this particular community, folks may appreciate the following related material:
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@electricarchaeo@scholar.social My mother, on hearing that my first book had been declined by the press that had been considering it because the marketing guys weren't sure how to sell it: “You mean they were planning on making money off of your book?”
reply to
my daughter, when very young, once said to me ‘when are you going to write something that people want to read?’ and i am continually haunted —Shawn Graham @electricarchaeo@scholar.social https://scholar.social/@electricarchaeo/110503595819290672
and to Kathleen Fitzpatrick at https://hcommons.social/@kfitz/110503673214772574
@kfitz @electricarchaeo@scholar.social My friend P.M. Forni was always saddened when he spoke about his life's scholarly work only being read by "at most 4 people". But he felt kindness, civility, and generosity were the telos of life. He didn't want his students to be Renaissance experts and then be rude to an old woman in the street, so he wrote "Choosing Civility". He was thrilled when an Oprah appearance we got him garnered it instantaneous audience and overnight best seller status. He still sweated it out for his four readers. I'm certain his advice to you would to not be haunted, but keep sweating it out with kindness. You're influencing more people than you'll ever know. Thank you both for your arete and generosity.
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These links to these threads are priceless. Two questions: How can I connect with these Reddit users? Never mind, I’m sure I can find the answer myself. Second question - how do you keep these thread references so handy? Is this hypothes.is ? Zotero? Raindrop.io? I have no idea how to capture this kind of info and keep it accessible.
reply to u/coachdan007 at https://www.reddit.com/r/antinet/comments/13ygoz9/comment/jn80a7z/?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=web2x&context=3
Mostly these references were using Hypothesis, though I do have some material in Zotero. I don't use Raindrop. IIRC, I knew I'd seen the topics before and did a search for the tag bible and then narrowed it down my adding on zettelkasten and it popped up immediately. A large number of my replies here are just querying my digital ZK and spitting out pre-packaged answers or pointers to relevant material. I also occasionally do the same thing with my analog version, though with those I have to type them out. I follow roughly the same process for doing my own queries and writing. You get surprisingly good at it after a while, particularly when you know it's in there somewhere. Of course r/ has it's own internal search function too, so you could check out: - https://www.reddit.com/r/antinet/search/?q=bible&restrict_sr=1 - https://www.reddit.com/r/Zettelkasten/search/?q=bible&restrict_sr=1
and have a slightly wider net to get the fishes and loaves you're seeking. With the proper notes at hand, perhaps you'll soon be able to turn water into wine? Interestingly, I think you're the first who's ever asked this question here (or other related fora). I hope people don't think I spend all my time writing all these custom answers when I'm just tipping out my zettelkasten. (Though I do always keep my original answers too in the eventuality that I ever want to turn all of these thoughts into an article or book.)
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Thank you, Chris. I have been watching Dan Alosso's antinet book club. So, it's nice to have a face to the name. I just subscribed to your newsletter this morning from an article you wrote.This is probably not the correct place, but I'd like to learn more about your use of Hypothes.is.I think someone else mentioned a branch for each book, as well. I'll read the threads you cited. I am sure there will be some good stuff in there.@Chrisaldrich - have you heard or come across the "Encyclopedia Puritannica Project"?https://www.publishepp.com/This is kind of what I have in mind for my antinet. The ability to cross-reference authors to various topics ot themes or doctrines while also linking them to the specific verses or passages they use to make a point. AND to look up a Bible verse and see what authors in my antinet cite these verses and where. AND, lastly, to look at a theme and see which Bible verses map to that theme and which author wrote on that theme.I think the antinet is a good tool for this. Certainly not in a comprehensive way but in a way that interconnects my own studies and readings. But I suspect that I'll have to do some hard thinking over how to accomplish this.
reply to u/coachdan007 at https://www.reddit.com/r/antinet/comments/13ygoz9/comment/jn6fwzr/?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=web2x&context=3
Thanks u/coachdan007. I've heard of the EPP, but never delved heavily into it. There's still a lot of digging I want to do into Edwards' Miscellanies, but I just haven't had the time, sadly. Perhaps I'll find it over the summer? While you're searching around you might also find it interesting/useful to have an interleaved bible as well to give you bigger "margins" to write in as you go. This may make some of the direct thinking on the page a bit easier. Don't think too hard about some super custom method, just start practicing something that makes sense and evolve it as you go and as you need to.
As for Hypothesis, following my account or reading past notes may be useful/helpful. For the day to day, I've documented pieces of it along with tips and tricks over time on my site at https://boffosocko.com/tag/hypothes.is/. Some of the older posts when I was first starting out are probably more interesting as more recent ones can be sort of meta.
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Tipps for purchasing a Dictation Device
reply to Sascha at https://forum.zettelkasten.de/discussion/2583/tipps-for-purchasing-a-dictation-device#latest:
I've got an older Livescribe Pulse pen I love with a small pocket notebook or Post-It Notes. It has an optical character reader and special paper but also records audio and links it to the written text (either before or after the fact). I primarily use it for longer lectures where I'll take scant notes, but have the ability to add to them based on the recorded audio later. They've also got some 3rd party OCR solutions that will take your handwriting and convert it to digital text later. While they do larger sized notebooks and a variety of other papers as well (including printing your own), the small pocket size and ease of use has been fantastic. I've owned one version or another for more than a decade and really love them for this sort of audio on-the-go functionality. Since it's a digital pen, it's also unobtrusive in meetings. The added ability to share pdf documents with embedded audio after the fact isn't bad for classmates or meeting attendees.
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I have read that a Maincard's Keyword usually is not a word that is used in the thought that you wrote on the card.
reply to u/drogers8 at https://www.reddit.com/r/antinet/comments/13wlfbs/how_to_select_a_keyword_for_your_main_card/
I'm don't think I've ever seen that advice anywhere in my own reading. I've been doing this for ages and would suggest that it's actively bad advice. Use a keyword that seems useful, beneficial, and which you're likely to have the most interest in in the future. What do you suspect the future you will use to search for that card or a branch on that idea in the future? Use that.
Also, don't overthink this stuff. Just practice. You're going to make some mistakes, but with a small number of cards you'll start to figure it out on your own before things get too large. Your practice today is not going to look like your practice in 6 months and it'll change again 6 months after that.
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@chrisaldrich, I appreciate your feedback. Indeed there is magic in making notes which comes not only from finding connections in the ZK but also from making connections in mind. Maybe I'm confused. A mindset that makes note-making fun is one way to recruit the body's dopamine mechanism. This creates a positive feedback loop. More mote-making turns to more dopamine which turns to more note-making. Maybe even some notes on dopamine. (I have 11 already!) My sense of Luhmann's phrase "second memory" is a rehashing of an idea—a continued exploration. Using the ZK method is one way of formalizing the continued review of ideas. Without a formal process, it is too easy to fall into old bad habits and not work towards "the serendipity of combinatorial creativity. "
Reply to Will Simpson at https://forum.zettelkasten.de/discussion/comment/17939/#Comment_17939
There should be more conversation about zettelkasten as both a "ratchet" as well as a "flywheeel". Sometimes I feel like it's hard to speak of these things for either lack of appropriate words/naming and/or having a shared vocabulary for them.
Even Luhmann's "second memory" has a mushiness to it, but I certainly see your sense of it as a thing which moves forward. I have the same sort of sense with the Aboriginal cultural idea of a "songline" which acts as both a noun as well as having an internal sense of being a verb to me. The word "google" has physically and specifically undergone the transition from noun to verb in a way which "second memory" and "songline" haven't, though perhaps they should? The difference is that the word google is much more concrete and simple while second memory and songline have a lot more cultural material and meaning sitting with them if you know them and their fuller attendant practices.
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@Will Thanks for always keeping up with your regular threads and considerations.
I've been keeping examples of people talking about the "magic of note taking" for a bit. I appreciate your perspectives on it. Personally I consider large portions of it to be bound up with the ideas of what Luhmann termed as "second memory", the use of ZK to supplement our memories, and the serendipity of combinatorial creativity. I've traced portions of it back to the practices of Raymond Llull in which he bound up old mnemonic techniques with combinatorial creativity which goes back to at least Seneca.
A web search for "combinatorial creativity" may be useful, but there's a good attempt at what it entails here: https://fs.blog/seneca-on-combinatorial-creativity/
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https://www.reddit.com/r/antinet/comments/13tv9ls/question_how_fast_did_you_name_your_antinet/
Mine was a bit into the process, but not until I got the filing cabinet where they'll all ultimately live: https://boffosocko.com/2022/08/08/55808119/#Naming
See examples of people naming them here including: - Cvrie (Fallout 4 reference) - torspedia (after username on MediaWiki installation) - Todd (Bad Words reference to study binder) - Plumeria (after 4 months) - Hamilton after video - Epictetus (meaning "to acquire" from stoicism) - Zeke (short for Ezekiel) - Stewie (personal communication, Scheper's nickname, not mentioned on this page)
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@chrisaldrich I think the is an underated idea more broadly. I would love to see this done with other authors books that use an index card system, like Robert Greene. I think it would be a useful illustration to help people better understand the research and writing process. I've been wanting to and created a few experimental vaults where I do a similar thing except for a podcast (all of Sean Carroll's Mindscape transcripts are free) or a textbook (Introduction to Psychology). But I never followed through on the projects just because of how much work it takes to due it right. This also makes me wish for a social media type zettelkasten, where a community can keep a shared vault, creating a social cognition of sorts. I know this was kind of happening with the shared vaults Dan Alloso was experimenting with but his seemed more focused than random/chaotic. I'm also not sure if he continued it for later books.
Reply to Nick at https://forum.zettelkasten.de/discussion/comment/17926/#Comment_17926
Some pieces of social media come close to the sort of sense making and cognition you're talking about, but none does it in a pointed or necessarily collaborative way. The Hypothes.is social annotation tool comes about as close to it as I've seen or experienced beyond Wikipedia and variations which are usually a much slower boil process. As an example of Hypothes.is, here's a link to some public notes I've been taking on the "zettekasten output problem" which I made a call for examples for a while back. The comments on the call for examples post have some rich fodder some may appreciate. Some of the best examples there include videos by Victor Margolin, Ryan Holiday (Robert Greene's protoge), and Dustin Lance Black along with a few other useful examples that are primarily text-based and require some work to "see".
For those interested, I've collected a handful of fascinating examples of published note collections, published zettelkasten, and some digitized examples (that go beyond just Luhmann) which one can view and read to look into others' practices, but it takes some serious and painstaking work. Note taking archaeology could be an intriguing field.
Dan Allosso's Obsidian book club has kept up with additional books (they're just finishing Rayworth's Doughnut Economics and about to start Simon Winchester's new book Knowing What We Know, which just came out this month.) Their group Obsidian vault isn't as dense as it was when they started out, but it's still an intriguing shared space. For those interested in ZK and knowledge development, this upcoming Winchester book looks pretty promising. I'd invite everyone to join if they'd like to.
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Wittgenstein, Luhmann, Conrad Gessner, Leibniz, Linnaeus and Walter Benjamin are some I can think of off the top of my head.
reply to u/muhlfriedl by way of reply to u/chounosumuheya at https://www.reddit.com/r/Zettelkasten/comments/13s6dsg/comment/jlpt8ai/?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=web2x&context=3
Examples of zettelkasten users
S.D. Goitein, Beatrice Webb, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Harold Innis, Victor Margolin, Eminem, Aby Warburg, Antonin Sertillanges, Jacques Barzun, C. Wright Mills, Gotthard Deutsch, Roland Barthes, Umberto Eco, Vladimir Nabokov, Gerald Weinberg, Michael Ende, Twyla Tharp, Hans Blumenberg, Keith Thomas, Arno Schmidt, Mario Bunge, Sönke Ahrens, Dan Allosso for a few more. If you go with those who used commonplace books and waste books, which are notebook-based instead of index card-based, there are thousands upon thousands more.
Historically the easier question might be: what creators didn't use one of these systems and was successful?!? The broad outlines of these methods go back much, much farther than Niklas Luhmann. These patterns are not new...
Personally, I've used my own slip box to write large portions of the articles on my website. I also queried it to compile this reply.
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What do you recommend when using a commonplace book or creating a bibcard? Which contexts are more suitable to use one or the other?
reply to u/ricardosilvabr at https://www.reddit.com/r/antinet/comments/13qzgjs/comment/jlmurbf/?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=web2x&context=3
The zettelkasten and commonplace traditions are broadly the same (especially after John Locke's indexing method, you'd just index ideas against page number and maybe line if you want to go that far in a commonplace). The primary affordance is that you can more easily rearrange individual ideas on cards, which may make outlining and juxtaposing disparate ideas easier for subsequent composition.
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Those are good points.
Reply to Dan Allosso at https://danallosso.substack.com/p/what-value-do-i-add-to-the-substack/comment/16463063
I just saw this morning that Jillian Hess, a professor/researcher/writer at a community college in New York, is also contemplating some of the same territory and trying to balance out the necessaries: https://jillianhess.substack.com/p/introducing-ps-a-new-paid-subscriber
I see that she's using both Amazon and Bookshop affiliate accounts and links in her stream. Have you delved into this for supplementation (albeit probably small)? I've done it for years and it never nets enough to even cover my hosting costs, though it makes the hobbyist portion of the outlay a bit more comfortable.
Beyond this, you might appreciate her particular Substack on note books and note taking or her new book: Hess, Jillian M. How Romantics and Victorians Organized Information: Commonplace Books, Scrapbooks, and Albums. 1st ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2022. https://amzn.to/3VY4RU7
You're probably beyond needing them, but Substack has been building their writer resources and tips for helping to build paid audience. Details at https://on.substack.com/s/resources and https://on.substack.com/s/office-hours
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Cleaning out a building and found this typewriter. Not in the best shape, the keys push but kind of get stuck on each other sometimes. Don’t know if or how I can fix it or what I can do with it. Looked it up; here’s one that looks like the same on eBay that looks about the same. Thoughts???? Wondering if this is a good find.
It's got some serious Austin Powers 60s/70s swagger, but obviously will need some TLC and a new ribbon. Is it worth hundreds, even in good shape? Probably not, but I'll bet it could be cleaned up/repaired and bring someone lots of joy (either fixing it or using it regularly). YouTube has lots of starter videos of people cleaning/fixing older machines that will give you some ideas. If it's not your sort of hobby, pass it along to someone who might enjoy it, or sell it to your local repair shop or maybe on eBay for a few dollars. Someone could bring it back to life.
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Perhaps you're conflating too many things? Ask first, what value do I add to the world? (Arguably loads.) Then ask: How do I (best) distribute this value? To this perhaps one of your answers is Substack, which may or may not be one of many tools you use for this purpose. Then the follow on question is what value do you get back from it?
Given HCR's numbers (especially in comparison with Twitter) and her time on the platform, I suspect she may have (or at this point had) some sort of special platform deal with Substack which isn't publicly known beyond the basics of what the typical person could get. It's probably the modern digital equivalent of the sort of deal a highly visible academic might get from a magazine like The Atlantic. The pay scale may be different but we can obviously see that the daily output is wildly different too. If you're not aware, when Substack started they reached out to a wide variety of famous/semi-famous people and helped them to build a quick audience that would have taken them far more time and effort than they would otherwise have ever invested. Part of this was providing initial payment/seed money which was really their early investment for getting lots of quality content on the platform as a means of drawing the masses to come to the platform to both read and create as well. Unless you're a massive name working with them directly, you're unlikely to get this sort of deal today, and this means a tougher up hill slog for the "rest of us" as the platform doesn't need to pay for this sort of scaling/network effect now. If nothing else, knowing these early economies of Substack (and really lots of other social platforms, Medium certainly followed this script as an example) will help you to have a broader perspective and better compare your apples to others' oranges.
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Although Niklas Luhmann used zettelkasten on the basis of his academic works, I have seen very few sources on the academic use of zettelkasten, except for a few videos. Is there any source you can recommend on this subject?Another question I have is about the academic reuse of notes. After Luhmann used a note in one academic text, how did he use that note again in another work? Or in general, how can we avoid self-plagiarism in the academic use of zettelkasten?
reply to u/edumanos at https://www.reddit.com/r/antinet/comments/13p0myn/academic_using_of_zettelkasten/
The Luhmann's method was very specific to him, but the broader slip box method has been in wide use in academic settings for centuries, particularly in the humanities. I most often recommend Umberto Eco's book in conjunction with Adler/Van Doren's How to Read a Book, but below are a small selection of manuals on very closely related note taking methods. These can be found in a handful of languages and some even more specific to particular areas of study, though broadly they're all useful to almost any area. You'll note that some are available for free on archive.org as they're out of copyright, have been scanned, or are open educational resources. I've tried to link most of these for convenience.
If this list isn't enough, or you're looking for something written for a specific subfield (sociology, for example), let me know as I'm sure there are a plethora of others, or even some fun short pieces like: - Thomas, Keith. “Diary: Working Methods.” London Review of Books, June 10, 2010. https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v32/n11/keith-thomas/diary. - Mills, C. Wright. “On Intellectual Craftsmanship (1952).” Society 17, no. 2 (January 1, 1980): 63–70. https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02700062.
My favorite short/overview video is that of Victor Margolin's process: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kxyy0THLfuI.
As for self-plagiarism, some have used a red pencil or other means to mark cards (notes) they've used in specific works as they write so that they know they've been used and can then self-cite their prior works to avoid self-plagiarism or to up their citation count.
- Ahrens, Sönke. How to Take Smart Notes: One Simple Technique to Boost Writing, Learning and Thinking – for Students, Academics and Nonfiction Book Writers. Create Space, 2017.
- Allosso, Dan, and S. F. Allosso. How to Make Notes and Write. Minnesota State Pressbooks, 2022. https://minnstate.pressbooks.pub/write/.
- Barzun, Jacques. The Modern Researcher. Boston : Houghton Mifflin Co., 1992. http://archive.org/details/modernresearcher00barz_1.
- Bernstein, Mark. Tinderbox: The Tinderbox Way. 3rd ed. Watertown, MA: Eastgate Systems, Inc., 2017. http://www.eastgate.com/Tinderbox/TinderboxWay/index.html.
- Blair, Ann M. “Manuals on Note-Taking (Ars Excerpendi).” In Brill’s Encyclopaedia of the Neo-Latin World. Brill, May 7, 2014. https://referenceworks.brillonline.com/entries/encyclopaedia-of-the-neo-latin-world/manuals-on-note-taking-ars-excerpendi-B9789004271029_0058.
- Chavigny, Paul Marie Victor. Organisation du travail intellectuel, recettes pratiques à l’usage des étudiants de toutes les facultés et de tous les travailleurs. Paris: Delagrave, 1918. https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/011209555.
- DeCarlo, Matthew, Cory Cummings, and Kate Agnelli. Graduate Research Methods in Social Work. Open Social Work, 2021. https://doi.org/10.21061/msw-research.
- Dow, Earle Wilbur. Principles of a Note-System for Historical Studies. New York: Century Company, 1924.
- Eco, Umberto. How to Write a Thesis. Translated by Caterina Mongiat Farina and Geoff Farina. 1977. Reprint, Cambridge, MA, USA: MIT Press, 2015. https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/how-write-thesis.
- Gessner, Konrad. Pandectarum Sive Partitionum Universalium. 1st Edition. Zurich: Christoph Froschauer, 1548.
- Goutor, Jacques. The Card-File System of Note-Taking. Approaching Ontario’s Past 3. Toronto: Ontario Historical Society, 1980. http://archive.org/details/cardfilesystemof0000gout.
- Heyde, Johannes Erich, and Heinz Siegel. Technik des wissenschaftlichen Arbeitens. 10th ed. 1931. Reprint, Berlin: Kiepert, 1970. https://www.worldcat.org/title/TECHNIK-DES-WISSENSCHAFTLICHEN-ARBEITENS.-MIT-E.-ERG.BEITR.-DOKUMENTATION-VON-HEINZ-SIEGEL.-10.DURCHGES.AUFL/oclc/1075391218.
- Kuntze, Friedrich. Die Technik der geistigen Arbeit (The technique of mental work). Carl Winter’s Universitätsbuchhandlung, 1923.
- Langlois, Charles Victor, and Charles Seignobos. Introduction to the Study of History. Translated by George Godfrey Berry. First. New York: Henry Holt and company, 1898. http://archive.org/details/cu31924027810286.
- ———. Introduction to the study of history. London, Cass, 1966. http://archive.org/details/introductiontos00langgoog.
- Leicester, Mal, and Denise Taylor. Take Great Notes. 1st edition. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications Ltd, 2019.
- Maxfield, Ezra Kempton. “Suggestions for Note Taking.” Delaware College Bulletin 6, no. 4 (December 1910).
- Mei, Jennifer. Refining, Reading, Writing : Includes 2009 Mla Update Card. Nelson Canada, 2007. http://archive.org/details/refiningreadingw0000meij.
- Range, Ellen. Take Note! Taking and Organizing Notes. Ann Arbor, Michigan: Cherry Lake Publishing, 2014.
- Schrag, Zachary M. The Princeton Guide to Historical Research. Princeton University Press, 2021. https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctv1pdrrc9.
- Sertillanges, Antonin Gilbert. La vie intellectuelle; son esprit, ses conditions, ses méthodes. Paris, Éditions de la Revue des jeunes, 1921. http://archive.org/details/lavieintellectue00sert.
- Sertillanges, Antonin Gilbert, and Mary Ryan. The Intellectual Life: Its Spirit, Conditions, Methods. First English Edition, Fifth printing. 1921. Reprint, Westminster, MD: The Newman Press, 1960. http://archive.org/details/a.d.sertillangestheintellectuallife.
- Seward, Samuel Swayze. Note-Taking. Boston, Allyn and Bacon, 1910. http://archive.org/details/cu31924012997627.
- Webb, Sidney, and Beatrice Webb. Methods of Social Study. London; New York: Longmans, Green & Co., 1932. http://archive.org/details/b31357891.
- Weinberg, Gerald M. Weinberg on Writing: The Fieldstone Method. New York, N.Y: Dorset House, 2005.
Good luck!
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I've been using index cards for tracking reading notes (lit or bib notes now) and I want to change this topic of index cards over to the Z system. In the past, the main section was "writing" and two subsections, "nonfiction" and "fiction". They are all how-to. I have some main notes but most are from every writing book published which I've read in the last 10 years (yep, shelves full). Approx. 3000 index cards, maybe more, with lots of sub-subsection, etc. I've been teaching writing for the last 10+ years and would love to connect the dots easier now than I have in the past. On the list, I couldn't find the recommended category to place these under. Maybe productivity is in there somewhere. I'm working on a mind map structure now. Any thoughts or advice on this? Anyone else done this?
Has your prior system not been working for you? What do you want to gain from making the change? What list are you looking at that you don't see a category? Isn't the category "writing", "fiction writing", "nonfiction writing", etc.?
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Obsidian for teachers .t3_13khuxs._2FCtq-QzlfuN-SwVMUZMM3 { --postTitle-VisitedLinkColor: #9b9b9b; --postTitleLink-VisitedLinkColor: #9b9b9b; --postBodyLink-VisitedLinkColor: #989898; }
This is great. I'll put it into my collection along with Shawn Graham who has some prior work for teaching with Obsidian (https://shawngraham.github.io/hist1900/#the-big-idea) as does u/danallosso who has also used it quite bit for both classes as well as Open Education Resources. If you search for Dan's YouTube & Substack, you're likely to find some of his writing/resources there.
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Is the paper really that great? I've got my own self-printed stationery cards that I've used for ages, but lust after that lovely designed wood. Would standard index cards work in that base or would the rounded corners get in the way? I totally commiserate with the collecting productivity systems like Pokémon! I'm still looking for someone to recreate the original 1903 Memindex system...
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I went to that website and he mentions the Dewey Decimal Classification System. I have look around and only found examples/files that goes a few levels deep. He gives an example: 516.375 Finsler geometry BUT I can not find any DDC files that goes to that level of classification. The DDC is finer grain than the what the AOoD system goes so for me I am going with the DDC for possible keywords list.Any ideas where I can find a complete DDC listing I can download?
reply to drogers8 at https://www.reddit.com/r/antinet/comments/13eyg8p/comment/jkaksn4/?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=web2x&context=3
You can find some basic top level or second level DDC listings online, but to get the full set of listings, you've got to subscribe to the system which is updated every few years, something only library systems and large publishers typically do. To give yourself an idea of how deep this rabbit hole goes the DDC 23 is four volumes long and each volume is in the 1,000 page range. The DDC 23 self-identifies as 0.25.4'31-dc22. For most categories DDC generally only goes as deep as the thousands place (like Finsler geometry) though others will go slightly deeper usually to designate locations/cities. Most libraries only categorize to the tenths place, and sometimes these numbers can be found on the copyright page of books, often with the DDC volume number. I mentioned the UDC in that piece, but didn't give any links, but you could try:<br /> - https://udcsummary.info/php/index.php?lang=en - https://udcc.org/index.php/site/page?view=subject_coverage - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_Decimal_Classification
Honestly, you're wasting time and making way more work for yourself to adopt one of these numbering methods for a Luhmann-esque zettelkasten. Try asking yourself this question: What benefits/affordances will I get in the long run for having my numbering system mirror the DDC or UDC? (Unless you can come up with a really fantastic answer, you're just making more work to look up headings/numbers on a regular basis.)
In practice the numbers are simply addresses so you can quickly find things again using your index. If you're doing threads of cards (folgezettel), you're going to very quickly have tangentially related ideas of things mixed together anyway. (As an example, I've got lots of science and even some anthropology mixed into my math section, so having DDC numbers on those would be generally useless at the end of the day.) If it helps, Nicolas Gatien has a pretty reasonable and short video which makes this apparent: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tdHH3YjOnZE.
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Requesting advice for where to put a related idea to a note I'm currently writing .t3_13gcbj1._2FCtq-QzlfuN-SwVMUZMM3 { --postTitle-VisitedLinkColor: #9b9b9b; --postTitleLink-VisitedLinkColor: #9b9b9b; --postBodyLink-VisitedLinkColor: #989898; } Hi! I am new to building a physical ZK. Would appreciate some help.Pictures here: https://imgur.com/a/WvyNVXfI have a section in my ZK about the concept of "knowledge transmission" (4170/7). The below notes are within that section.I am currently writing a note about how you have to earn your understanding... when receiving knowledge / learning from others. (Picture #1)Whilst writing this note, I had an idea that I'm not quite sure belongs on that note itself - and I'm not sure where it belongs. About how you also have to "earn" the sharing of knowledge. (Picture #2)Here are what I think my options are for writing about the idea "you have to earn your sharing of knowledge":Write this idea on my current card. 4170/7/1Write this idea on a new note - as a variant idea of my current note. 4170/7/1aWrite this idea on a new note - as a continuation of my current note. 4170/7/1/1Write this idea on a new note - as a new idea within my "knowledge transmission" branch. 4170/7/2What would you do here?
reply to u/throwthis_throwthat at https://www.reddit.com/r/antinet/comments/13gcbj1/requesting_advice_for_where_to_put_a_related_idea/
I don't accept the premise of your question. This doesn't get said often enough to people new to zettelkasten practice: Trust your gut! What does it say? You'll learn through practice that there are no "right" answers to these. Put a number on it, file it, and move on. Practice, practice, practice. You'll be doing this in your sleep soon enough. As long as it's close enough, you'll find it. Save your mental cycles for deeper thoughts than this.
Asking others for their advice is fine, but it's akin to asking a well-practiced mnemonist what visual image they would use to remember something. Everyone is different and has different experiences and different things that make their memories sticky for them. What works incredibly well for how someone else thinks and the level of importance they give an idea is never as useful or as "true" as how you think about it. Going with your gut is going to help you remember it better and is far likelier to make it easier to find in the future.
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jdm @chrisaldrich Definitely inspired by your blogging.
reply to @jdm at https://micro.blog/jdm/19064665
Thanks! If you want sneak peaks of upcoming pieces, you might try subscribing to my "other" microblog: https://hypothes.is/users/chrisaldrich
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howaboutthis.substack.com howaboutthis.substack.com
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Hi Chris, I remember seeing your writing elsewhere. That's... a lot of index cards. Also, the cost per card is higher than I expected but then again if I ever pay $0.01 per card I should expect lower quality...
reply to Mark Dykeman at https://howaboutthis.substack.com/p/rethinking-the-notebook-snob-meets/comment/15885993
Given our overlap of topics, you most likely saw something via https://boffosocko.com/research/zettelkasten-commonplace-books-and-note-taking-collection/. I may have been responsible for you trying out the digital annotation tool Hypothes.is once upon a time?
The price I quoted was for the ubiquitous and inexpensive Oxford index cards and not for the much higher quality Exacompta/Bristol cards which can run up to 10¢ a card or more—they're closer to the fountain pen quality papers you'd find in the higher end notebooks and are manufactured by the a subsidiary of the corporate parent that makes Rhodia/Clairefontaine.
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analogoffice.net analogoffice.net
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https://analogoffice.net/2023/05/03/too-much-information.html
Your title made me think it was about a different, but related book...
I too bought Hess' book at Kimberly's recommendation, but I'm still plowing through the end of Ann M. Blair's Too Much to Know: Managing Scholarly Information before the Modern Age. Yale University Press, 2010. https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300165395/too-much-know. You might find it interesting, but hopefully not overwhelming.
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jillianhess.substack.com jillianhess.substack.com
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reply to Jillian Hess at https://jillianhess.substack.com/p/noted-a-welcome/comments
At last, my sort of alveary! No longer need I flit about as all the flowers to be culled are being aggregated for me. I look forward to reading your work as you (as our Vergil says) "pack close the flowering honey, and swell their cells with nectar sweet."
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e know if this Mike has a website/newsletter? I've just started reading up on Celtic history, delving deep down into druidry, so I'd be interested to see what he's doing.2 commentsAwardshare
reply to u/atrebatian at https://www.reddit.com/r/antinet/comments/13dsj8v/celtic_druid_history/
I've only scratched the surface of the Druids, but have gotten pretty deep into Celtic history over the past few years, including becoming reasonably fluent in colloquial Welsh and working on old Welsh for some research.
As an excellent set of introductions, I'd recommend:
Paxton, Jennifer. The Celtic World. Great Courses, 2251. The Teaching Company, Chantilly, VA, 2018. Cunliffe, Barry. The Celts: A Very Short Introduction. Very Short Introductions. Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press, 2003.<br /> ———. Druids: A Very Short Introduction. Very Short Introductions. Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press, 2010.
You'll also probably appreciate the following:
Aldhouse-Green, Miranda. Animals in Celtic Life and Myth. Routledge, 1993.<br /> ———. Caesar’s Druids: An Ancient Priesthood. Yale University Press, 2010.<br /> ———. The Celtic Myths: A Guide to the Ancient Gods and Legends. Thames and Hudson, 2015.<br /> ———. The Celtic World. Routledge, 2012.<br /> Avalon, Annwyn. Water Witchcraft: Magic and Lore from the Celtic Tradition. Red Wheel Weiser.<br /> Bridgman, Timothy P. Hyperboreans: Myth and History in Celtic-Hellenic Contacts.<br /> Chadwick, Nora. The Celts: Second Edition. Revised edition. London ; New York, N.Y: Penguin Books, 1998.<br /> Conway, D. J. Celtic Magic. LLewellyn’s World Magic Series, 1.0, 2011.<br /> Cunliffe, Barry. The Ancient Celts. 1st edition. Oxford ; New York: Oxford University Press, 1997.<br /> Fagan, Edited by Brian M., ed. The Oxford Companion to Archaeology. Oxford Companions. Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press, 1996.<br /> Fimi, Dimitra. Celtic Myth in Contemporary Children’s Fantasy: Idealization, Identity, Ideology. Critical Approaches to Children’s Literature, 1.0, 2017.<br /> Forest, Danu. Celtic Tree Magic: Ogham Lore and Druid Mysteries. Llewellyn Worldwide, LTD., 2014.<br /> Hughes, Kristoffer. The Book of Celtic Magic: Transformative Teachings from the Cauldron of Awen. Llewellyn Worldwide, LTD., 2014.<br /> King Arthur: History and Legend. Streaming Video. Vol. 2376. The Great Courses: Literature and Language. Chantilly, VA: The Teaching Company, 2015. https://www.wondrium.com/king-arthur-history-and-legend.<br /> Rutherford, Ward. Celtic Mythology: The Nature and Influence of Celtic Myth from Druidism to Arthurian Legend. Red Wheel Weiser.
One of my favorites on memory which underpins early Celtic life and is likely related to Druids, (but which doesn't cover them directly, but is likely similar to their memory practice) is the anthropology text:
Kelly, Lynne. Knowledge and Power in Prehistoric Societies: Orality, Memory and the Transmission of Culture. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781107444973.
I've also got lots of research on henges and wooden/stone circles and related archaeology in early British isles history, but this may be afield from your interests.
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forum.eastgate.com forum.eastgate.com
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Tinderbox Meetup - Sunday, May 7, 2023 Video: Connect with Sönke Ahrens live, the author of How to Take Smart Notes
reply for Fidel at https://forum.eastgate.com/t/tinderbox-meetup-sunday-may-7-2023-video-connect-with-sonke-ahrens-live-the-author-of-how-to-take-smart-notes/6659
@fidel (I'm presuming you're the same one from the meetup on Sunday, if not perhaps someone might tag the appropriate person?), I was thinking a bit more on your question of using physical index cards for writing fiction. You might find the examples of both Vladimir Nabokov and Dustin Lance Black, a screenwriter, useful as they both use index card-based workflows.
Vladimir Nabokov died in 1977 leaving an unfinished manuscript in note card form for the novel The Original of Laura . Penguin later published the incomplete novel with in 2012 with the subtitle A Novel in Fragments . Unlike most manuscripts written or typewritten on larger paper, this one came in the form of 138 index cards. Penguin's published version recreated these cards in full-color reproductions including the smudges, scribbles, scrawlings, strikeouts, and annotations in English, French, and Russian. Perforated, one could tear the cards out of the book and reorganize in any way they saw fit or even potentially add their own cards to finish the novel that Nabokov couldn't. Taking a look at this might give you some ideas of how Nabokov worked and how you might adapt the style for yourself. Another interesting resource is this article with some photos/links about his method with respect to writing Lolita: https://www.openculture.com/2014/02/the-notecards-on-which-vladimir-nabokov-wrote-lolita.html
You might also find some useful tidbits on his writing process (Bristol cards/Exacompta anyone?) in: Gold, Herbert. “Vladimir Nabokov, The Art of Fiction No. 40.” The Paris Review, 1967. https://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/4310/the-art-of-fiction-no-40-vladimir-nabokov.
Carl Mydans photographed Nabokov while writing in September 1958 and some of those may be interesting to you as well.
Dustin Lance Black outlines his index card process in this video on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vrvawtrRxsw
If you dig around you'll also find Michael Ende and a variety of other German fiction writers who used index cards on the Zettelkasten page on Wikipedia, but I suspect most of the material on their processes are written in German.
Index cards for fiction writing may allow some writers some useful affordances/benefits. By using small atomic pieces on note cards, one can be far more focused on the idea and words immediately at hand. It's also far easier in a creative and editorial process to move pieces around experimentally.
Similarly, when facing Hemmingway's "White Bull", the size and space of an index card is fall smaller. This may have the effect that Twitter's short status updates have for writers who aren't faced with the seemingly insurmountable burden of writing a long blog post or essay in other software. They can write 280 characters and stop. Of if they feel motivated, they can continue on by adding to the prior parts of a growing thread.
However, if you can, try to use a card catalog drawer with a rod so that you don't spill all of your well-ordered cards the way the character in Robert M. Pirsig's novel Lila (1991) did.
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I may not understand this right, but if I'm creating an original idea, who am I citing for? Maybe it's just something I never understood properly how that worked and that's the issue. Part of the reason I was asking if anyone knew of actual academic research that had been published while using a ZK was so I could see how it worked, in action.
reply to u/ruthlessreuben at https://www.reddit.com/r/Zettelkasten/comments/w5yz0n/comment/ihxojq0/?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=web2x&context=3
u/ruthlessreuben, as a historian, you're likely to appreciate some variations which aren't as Luhmann-centric. Try some of the following:
- Victor Margolin: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kxyy0THLfuI
- Thomas, Keith. “Diary: Working Methods.” London Review of Books, June 10, 2010. https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v32/n11/keith-thomas/diary.
- S. D. Goitein used a (non-Luhmann-esque) zettelkasten to write many things including the magisterial A Mediterranean Society: The Jewish communities of the Arab World as Portrayed in the Documents of the Cairo Geniza (1967–1993). Incidentally he took 1/3 less notes and had 1/3 more output than Luhmann: https://boffosocko.com/2023/01/14/s-d-goiteins-card-index-or-zettelkasten/.
The following note taking manuals (or which cover it in part) all bear close similarities to Luhmann's system, but were written by historians and related to the ideas of "historical method":
- Barzun, Jacques. The Modern Researcher. Boston : Houghton Mifflin Co., 1992. http://archive.org/details/modernresearcher00barz_1.
- Dow, Earle Wilbur. Principles of a Note-System for Historical Studies. New York: Century Company, 1924.
- Goutor, Jacques. The Card-File System of Note-Taking. Approaching Ontario’s Past 3. Toronto: Ontario Historical Society, 1980. http://archive.org/details/cardfilesystemof0000gout.
- Langlois, Charles Victor, and Charles Seignobos. Introduction to the Study of History. Translated by George Godfrey Berry. First. New York: Henry Holt and company, 1898. http://archive.org/details/cu31924027810286.
Although she's a sociologist, you might also appreciate Beatrice Webb's coverage which also has some early database collection flavor:
Webb, Sidney, and Beatrice Webb. Methods of Social Study. London; New York: Longmans, Green & Co., 1932. http://archive.org/details/b31357891.
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I'm not actually setting a productivity goal, I'm just tracking metadata because it's related to my research. Of which the ZettelKasten is one subject.That being said, in your other post you point to "Quality over Quantity" what, in your opinion, is a quality note?Size? Number of Links? Subjective "goodness"?
reply to u/jordynfly at https://www.reddit.com/r/Zettelkasten/comments/13b0b5c/comment/jjcu3cn/?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=web2x&context=3
I'm curious what your area of research is? What are you studying with respect to Zettelkasten?
Caveat notetarius. Note collections are highly idiosyncratic to the user or intended audience, thus quality will vary dramatically on the creator's needs and future desires and potential uses. Contemporaneous, very simple notes can be valuable for their initial sensemaking and quite often in actual practice stop there.
Ultimately, only the user can determine perceived quality and long term value for themselves. Future generations of historians, anthropologists, scholars, and readers, might also find value in notes and note collections, but it seems rare that the initial creators have written them with future readers and audiences in mind. Often they're less useful as the external reader is missing large swaths of context.
For my own personal notes, I consider high quality notes to be well-sourced, highly reusable, easily findable, and reasonably tagged/linked. My favorite, highest quality notes are those that are new ideas which stem from the combination of two high quality notes. With respect to subjectivity, some of my philosophy is summarized by one of my favorite meta-zettels (alt text also available) from zettelmeister Umberto Eco.
Anecdotally, 95% of my notes are done digitally and in public, but I've only got scant personal evidence that anyone is reading or interacting with them. I never write them with any perceived public consumption in mind (beyond the readers of the finished pieces that ultimately make use of them), but it is often very useful to get comments and reactions to them. I'm only aware of a small handful of people publishing their otherwise personal note collections (usually subsets) to the web (outside of social media presences which generally have a different function and intent).
Intellectual historians have looked at and documented external use cases of shared note collections, commonplace books, annotated volumes, and even diaries. There are even examples of published (usually posthumously) commonplace books, waste books, etc., but these are often for influential public and intellectual figures. Here Ludwig Wittgenstein's Zettel, Walter Benjamin's Arcades Project, Vladimir Nabokov's The Original of Laura, Roland Barthes' Mourning Diary, Georg Christoph Lichtenberg's Waste Books, Ralph Waldo Emmerson, Ronald Reagan's card index commonplace, Stobaeus' Anthology, W. H. Auden's A Certain World, and Robert Southey’s Common-Place Book come quickly to mind not to mention digitized scholarly collections of Niklas Luhmann, W. Ross Ashby, S.D. Goitein, Jonathan Edwards' Miscellanies, and Aby Warburg's notes. Some of these latter will give you an idea of what they may have thought quality notes to have been for them, but often they mean little if nothing to the unstudied reader because they lack broader context or indication of linkages.
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Arno Schmidt compulsively wrote and hoarded scraps of text on index cards, which he cataloged meticulously. 130,000 of these were compiled together to form the basis for his magnum opus "Bottom's Dream". The German word for an index card is "Zettel". .t3_1267heb._2FCtq-QzlfuN-SwVMUZMM3 { --postTitle-VisitedLinkColor: #9b9b9b; --postTitleLink-VisitedLinkColor: #9b9b9b; --postBodyLink-VisitedLinkColor: #989898; }
reply to https://www.reddit.com/r/Arno_Schmidt/comments/1267heb/arno_schmidt_compulsively_wrote_and_hoarded/
Schmidt's zettelkasten (the direct English translation would be slip box thought card index is more appropriate) (or most likely only portions of it) was featured in the 2013 "Zettelkästen. Maschinen der Phantasie" exhibition in Marbach: https://www.dla-marbach.de/presse/presse-details/news/pm-11-2013/. For the interested, the exhibition did publish a book which will likely have more details, but when I looked about a year ago, it was only available in German.
There is a lot of research on zettelkasten methods, which are most often variations of the commonplace book method transferred into the index card or slip form rather than books/notebooks. I've not looked intensively at Schmidt's practice (yet), but it was likely similar to that of Victor Margolin outlined here, though in Margolin's case it was non-fiction: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kxyy0THLfuI. Vladimir Nabokov and Michael Ende are other writers who used similar methods.
There's some more examples/detail about the idea of zettelkasten (aka card indexes) in general on Wikipedia.
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Ddanielson @hjertnes Absolutely correct. Then I end up hoarding what Nock Co. cards I have left. cc: @brad
@Ddanielson @brad We have lots of fountain pen reviewers online🖋️. How can we normalize more/better index card reviews? Maybe even sommelier-style reviews that pair fountain pens with index cards: "You might appreciate this Stockroom Plus gridded card paired with your Montblanc Meisterstück" or "Roland Barthes would have gushed over these green Bristol cards with the TWSBI Diamond in Prussian Blue for his fichier vert." Also who's making Tomoe River paper in card stock thickness?!?
Incidentally, index cards + bullet journal = Memindex might be your sort of rabbit hole @hjertnes?
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Alternative numbering and classifications .t3_132o4w7._2FCtq-QzlfuN-SwVMUZMM3 { --postTitle-VisitedLinkColor: #9b9b9b; --postTitleLink-VisitedLinkColor: #9b9b9b; --postBodyLink-VisitedLinkColor: #989898; } Although Wikipedia Outline of academic disciplines seems like an ok place to start, it seems not ideal. Are there any guides I could use to develop my own numbering? I'm a historian, so treating it as a subcategory is not ideal, especially given how diverse this field is when it comes to its scope (what I mean by that is that you can divide history into many subcategories by period, field, geography etc.) I've taken a look at Propædia, which provides some interesting categories, but again, some of which are no interest to me (in terms of making notes about them).TLDR; Do you have any times for developing personal numbering system for your notes using decimal system? I'm developing ideas for my thesis and future dissertation, so I could arrange my notes around categories that, but I'd like to still have place for notes outside this spectrum (ideas for future papers etc.).
reply to u/zielkarz at https://www.reddit.com/r/antinet/comments/132o4w7/alternative_numbering_and_classifications/
Assigning random decimal numbers is more than adequate and is roughly what you'll have in the long term anyway... see https://boffosocko.com/2022/10/27/thoughts-on-zettelkasten-numbering-systems/ for some of what I've written on this before.
Because of the way that the topology of dense sets work in the real (decimal) numbers, any topic you give a number can be made arbitrarily close to any other topic you choose. As a result the numbers you choose are generally inconsequential, so simply choose something that you feel makes sense to you.
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forum.zettelkasten.de forum.zettelkasten.de
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[Zettel feedback] Functor (Yeah, just that)
reply to ctietze at https://forum.zettelkasten.de/discussion/2560/zettel-feedback-functor-yeah-just-that#latest
Kudos on tackling the subject area, especially on your own. I know from experience it's not as straightforward as it could/should be. I'll refrain from monkeying with the perspective/framing you're coming from with overly dense specifics. As an abstract mathematician I'd break this up into smaller pieces, but for your programming perspective, I can appreciate why you don't.
If you want to delve more deeply into the category theory space but without a graduate level understanding of multiple various areas of abstract mathematics, I'd recommend the following two books which come at the mathematics from a mathematician's viewpoint, but are reasonably easy/intuitive enough for a generalist or a non-mathematician coming at things from a programming perspective (particularly compared to most of the rest of what's on the market):
- Ash, Robert B. A Primer of Abstract Mathematics. 1st ed. Classroom Resource Materials. Washington, D.C.: The Mathematical Association of America, 1998.
- primarily chapter 1, but the rest of the book is a great primer/bridge to higher abstract math in general)
- Spivak, David I. Category Theory for the Sciences. MIT Press, 2014.
- Spivak had a free draft prepublication version at https://arxiv.org/abs/1302.6946; There's also an open courseware version of his MIT course with a free .pdf textbook (with a 2013 date, but ostensibly a copy of the final published version from 2014) at https://ocw.mit.edu/courses/18-s996-category-theory-for-scientists-spring-2013/
You'll have to dig around a bit more for them (his website, Twitter threads, etc.), but John Carlos Baez is an excellent expositor of some basic pieces of category theory.
For an interesting framing from a completely non-technical perspective/conceptualization, a friend of mine wrote this short article on category theorist Emily Riehl which may help those approaching the area for the first time: https://hub.jhu.edu/magazine/2021/winter/emily-riehl-category-theory/?ref=dalekeiger.net
One of the things which makes Category Theory difficult for many is that to have multiple, practical/workable (homework or in-book) examples to toy with requires having a reasonably strong grasp of 3-4 or more other areas of mathematics at the graduate level. When reading category theory books, you need to develop the ability to (for example) focus on the algebra examples you might understand while skipping over the analysis, topology, or Lie groups examples you don't (yet) have the experience to plow through. Giving yourself explicit permission to skip the examples you have no clue about will help you get much further much faster.
I haven't maintained it since, but here's a site where I aggregated some category theory resources back in 2015 for some related work I was doing at the time: https://cat.boffosocko.com/course-resources/ I was aiming for basic/beginner resources, but there are likely to be some highly technical ones interspersed as well.
- Ash, Robert B. A Primer of Abstract Mathematics. 1st ed. Classroom Resource Materials. Washington, D.C.: The Mathematical Association of America, 1998.
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kimberlyhirsh.com kimberlyhirsh.com
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Want to read: How Romantics and Victorians Organized Information by Jillian M. Hess 📚
https://kimberlyhirsh.com/2023/04/28/want-to-read.html
👀 How did I not see this?!?? 😍 Looks like a good follow up to Ann Blair's Too Much to Know (Yale, 2010) and the aperitif of Simon Winchester's Knowing What We Know (Harper) which just came out on Tuesday. 📚 Thanks for the recommendation Kimberly!
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mastodon.social mastodon.socialMastodon1
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AnthonyJohn @AnthonyJohn@pkm.socialDo you ever get the feeling that you're in an abusive relationship is note taking apps. I've used then all and in my pursuit for perfection have achieved absolutely nothing. This is the subject of my next long-form essay. subscribe for free at http://notentirelyboring.com to read it first. (And you'll also get a weekly newsletter thats not entirely boring)#PKM #NoteTaking #Obsidian #RoamResearch #Logseq #BearApr 20, 2023, 24:40
reply to @AnthonyJohn@pkm.social at https://mastodon.social/@AnthonyJohn@pkm.social/110230007393359308
Perfectionism and Shiny object syndrome are frequently undiagnosed diseases. Are you sure it's not preventing you from building critical mass in one place to actually accomplish your goals? Can't wait to see the essay.
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Any good anti-net programs and Android apps out there? .t3_1301mhl._2FCtq-QzlfuN-SwVMUZMM3 { --postTitle-VisitedLinkColor: #9b9b9b; --postTitleLink-VisitedLinkColor: #9b9b9b; --postBodyLink-VisitedLinkColor: #989898; } I think that I will get an idea of how to go about doing the anti-net note-taking system with an example done by a program. Also with the use of an Android app. Any recommendations for both my phone and my computer? If both of them may be free. Any feedback is welcome.
reply to u/MisterTTS at https://www.reddit.com/r/antinet/comments/1301mhl/any_good_antinet_programs_and_android_apps_out/
I've searched for ages, built programs for myself, and come to the conclusion that there is no really good app or workflow that will allow you to do both paper and digital at the same time without a lot of extra unnecessary repetitive work that doesn't provide you with tangible benefit to pay for itself. The best bet currently to save yourself a lot of time and headache is to pick one or the other and just go with it.
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++ on the idea of not putting date/time stamps in titles. I have seen a few people using traditional Luhmann-esque numbers in digital contexts. The primary benefit here is that it forces one to create a link to at least one other note and creates small outlines over time. Otherwise one can end up with a large "scrap heap" of orphaned notes that make a lot less sense over time.
mostly testing to see why my YouTube comments seem to be disappearing.... permalink: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FkB5FmgUY1I&lc=UgxP6r5pt94uWyK5t1Z4AaABAg
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forum.zettelkasten.de forum.zettelkasten.de
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Brainstorming: Cover for the Second Edition
Somehow I've always been disappointed with the two dimensional aspects of the pseudo-diagrams on prior books and articles in the space. If you go with something conceptual, perhaps try to capture a multidimensional systems/network feel? It's difficult to capture the ideas of serendipity and combinatorial complexity at play, but I'd love to see those somehow as the "sexier" ideas over the drab ideas people have when they think of their mundane conceptualizations of "just" notes.
Another idea may be to not go in the direction of the dot/line network map or "electronics circuit board route", but go back to the older ideas of clockworks, pneumatics, and steampunk...
By way of analogy, there's something sort of fun and suggestive about a person operating a Jacquard Loom to take threads (ideas) and fashioning something beautiful (https://photos.com/featured/jacquard-loom-with-swags-of-punched-print-collector.html) or maybe think, "How would John Underkoffler imagine such a machine?"
Now that I'm thinking about it I want a bookwheel (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bookwheel) next to my zettelkasten wheel!
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Mobility of the Antinet
reply to u/523tailor at https://www.reddit.com/r/antinet/comments/12xpq6s/mobility_of_the_antinet/
Many parts of the process are small bits that loan themselves to filling 5 minutes here or 10 minutes there, so mobility is a good thing, especially if you have a schedule that moves you around. I use a few of the following to help on the mobility front:
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Fun to see a Bruno Latour reference in a video on zettelkasten. I recently ran across a tidbit on Latour with respect to zettelkasten in a Jason Lustig paper:
"Moreover, card indexes give further form to Bruno Latour’s meditations on writing: if Latour described writing as a kind of ‘flattening’ of knowledge, then card indexes, like vertical files, represent information in three dimensions, making ideas simultaneously immutable and highly mobile, and the smallness of ideas and ‘facts’ forced to fit on paper slips allowed for reordering (Latour, 1986: 19-20)."
Lustig, Jason. “‘Mere Chips from His Workshop’: Gotthard Deutsch’s Monumental Card Index of Jewish History.” History of the Human Sciences 32, no. 3 (July 1, 2019): 49–75. DOI: 10.1177/0952695119830900.
permalink: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N5PDWfWli54&lc=UgwFo3oQLC02KrHrwbh4AaABAg
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thanks for the comprehensive overview; i'm going back to grad school after working for a couple years, any guides in particular you would recommend for getting up to speed and setting up a good workflow to keep track of articles and other references + store files and notes?
reply to u/whysofancy at https://www.reddit.com/r/Zettelkasten/comments/12u8gbv/comment/jh61vqw/?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=web2x&context=3
My general advice is to keep things as stupidly simple as possible and use as few tools/platforms as you can get away with.
If you haven't come across them, I highly recommend these two books:
- Eco, Umberto. How to Write a Thesis. Translated by Caterina Mongiat Farina and Geoff Farina. 1977. Reprint, Cambridge, MA, USA: MIT Press, 2015. https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/how-write-thesis.
- Adler, Mortimer J., and Charles Van Doren. How to Read a Book: The Classical Guide to Intelligent Reading. Revised and Updated ed. edition. 1940. Reprint, Touchstone, 2011.
You might also appreciate the short article by Mills:
Mills, C. Wright. “On Intellectual Craftsmanship (1952).” Society 17, no. 2 (January 1, 1980): 63–70. https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02700062.
Chances are pretty good your college/university's library does regular tutorials for tools like Zotero, particularly at the beginning of the term. Raul Pacheco has some good notes/ideas which may be helpful for things like literature reviews: http://www.raulpacheco.org/resources/. For Hypothes.is, try starting with this tutorial by their head of education: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=09z5hyBMs8s. If you're using Obsidian with Zotero, I'd recommend this walk through https://forum.obsidian.md/t/zotero-zotfile-mdnotes-obsidian-dataview-workflow/15536 and this video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XbGJH08ZfCs. If you have other tools in mind that you'd like to use, let the community know and perhaps we can make some suggestions about tutorials, but really, just jump in and try something out. Search YouTube and see what you find.
At the end of the day, start using a tool or two and simply practice with them. Practice, practice, and practice some more as that's what you'll be doing regularly in grad school. Read, write notes, organize them, write short articles or papers as practice. You'll eventually build up enough for a much longer thesis.
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Is Zotero a reliable software to transcribe physical notes to? .t3_12u8gbv._2FCtq-QzlfuN-SwVMUZMM3 { --postTitle-VisitedLinkColor: #9b9b9b; --postTitleLink-VisitedLinkColor: #9b9b9b; --postBodyLink-VisitedLinkColor: #989898; }
reply to u/noobinPython at https://www.reddit.com/r/Zettelkasten/comments/12u8gbv/is_zotero_a_reliable_software_to_transcribe/
Zotero is incredibly powerful and you could use it as a full end-to-end solution if you wanted to. It's particularly good if you're also using .pdf or other digital documents as it has the ability to pull in notes you've made digitally in a variety of .pdf annotation tools including Adobe's Acrobat (free version) which includes highlighting and notes you've made. It does have its own .pdf viewer now which also allows one to read, highlight, annotate, and tag individual pieces of text and then aggregate them into a single file. In addition to pulling in all the annotations into a single note file, one could break them into smaller individual notes per document if desired and these have addressable locations within the system.
Because Zotero is so powerful and can be dovetailed with a variety of other plugins specific to it as well as with other note taking tools like Obsidian, Logseq, etc. I'd highly recommend you try using it with a single document and take some notes to see if it'll work for you. There are surely some tutorials for using it as well as other useful plugins like Zotfile, MDnotes, etc. for your note taking workflows. It's open source and been in heavy use by many academics for over a decade and is actively developed, so it's one of the more robust systems out there. There are ways to do almost anything you'd want to with it from a note taking, reading, and citation management perspective, so searching and learning a bit about its features and functionality will get you a long way. Out of the box, it's reasonably intuitive, but there are lots of advanced features internally and even more features using a variety of plugins. Just the ability to have a browser extension and a keyboard shortcut to save all the bibliographic metadata of a source in a second or less and the ability to spit out full references for sharing with others has made it a godsend for me even if it did nothing else. Searching around will provide you with a huge amount of video tutorials and ways of using it either by itself, in conjunction with Zotfile, or dovetailing it with dozens of other tools.
Personally I use it in combination with a variety of other tools including Hypothes.is and Obsidian for a comprehensive workflow, but it could do incredibly well as a note taking tool just by itself.
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Best eReader with annotating capabilities? .t3_12vkt1a._2FCtq-QzlfuN-SwVMUZMM3 { --postTitle-VisitedLinkColor: #9b9b9b; --postTitleLink-VisitedLinkColor: #9b9b9b; --postBodyLink-VisitedLinkColor: #989898; }
reply to u/mazzios at https://www.reddit.com/r/englishmajors/comments/12vkt1a/best_ereader_with_annotating_capabilities/
I go out of my way to read .pdfs in my browser (laptop and/or mobile/tablet) so that I can use web.hypothes.is as a tool for quickly annotating, note taking, and tagging. (It also works for anything web-based.) It's reasonably easy to pull the data out (even by cut and paste) into other programs and tools like Obsidian if necessary. All of my infrastructure here is free. Hypothes.is makes a fantastic commonplace book set up for research, but I do a more refined zettelkasten structure within Obsidian for advanced thinking, writing, and eventual output.
Another solid option for digital copies is to read them within something like Zotero that will aggregate highlights/notes and allows tagging.
I don't do it as often, but the Calibre program has an e-reader and some annotation functionalities.
Kitt Betts-Masters has some excellent videos comparing some of the best in class e-readers. Try: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ifDi2SsQjQM. I don't have one yet, but I'm about to get either the Supernote A5X or the Boox Note Air 2 Plus after looking into some of this extensively. I'm not 100% sure that the user interface and data portability will be exactly what I'm hoping for though.
Exporting notes from Kindle manually works for non-pdf e-books, but the interface isn't as quick and easy. Generally I've not found Libby to be useful at all from a UI or data export functionality.
At the end of the day, sometimes a pile of index cards works best. If you've not read Sonke Ahrens (Create Space, 2017) or Umberto Eco (MIT, 2015) yet, they may be highly useful.
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Looking for a notebook case that also be used as a wallet. .t3_12tp1il._2FCtq-QzlfuN-SwVMUZMM3 { --postTitle-VisitedLinkColor: #9b9b9b; --postTitleLink-VisitedLinkColor: #9b9b9b; --postBodyLink-VisitedLinkColor: #989898; }
reply to u/Insomnia_Incarnate at tk
A zippered Lochby Pocket Journal could work reasonably well for this and the notebook could be slipped into the pocket or simply sit inside the wallet zippered.
Perhaps a bit larger, but still functional, you could consider the Flatty Works #5460 which fits up to A6 notebooks. As an A7 notebook is smaller/thinner, this would potentially be more comfortable as a wallet than for A6 notebooks.
A quick search on Etsy will find some interesting variety as well as potential custom options.
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I’m not very far into the “taking smart notes book” but my goal for this system is to learn more basically. I’m looking to improve my understanding in things that I can apply into my life and I’m confused in a sense of how can I use this system to formulate ideas that I can implement in my day to day life?
Reply to u/PanasheP_24 at https://www.reddit.com/r/Zettelkasten/comments/12t0qk6/learning/
You might find this framing interesting: The Zettelkasten Method of Note Taking Mirrors Most of the Levels of Bloom’s Taxonomy
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Also I really want to see the someone using their zettlekasten for managing knowledge about stuff not zettlekasten related. Mine mainly revolves about artistic appretiation, creativity and art fundamentals. I've been wanting to make a video series about it, just havent find the time. Your videos serve much as inspiration and as example of how may I go about it.
reply to Sara Martínez at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wQPvrcksjUA&lc=UgzbdJ1cdxkjnN0DBOl4AaABAg
Sara, here are some creative/art-related examples that might help:<br /> Dancer/Choreographer Twyla Tharp used a slightly modified slip box method that included much more than notes on cards for her dance-related work. She describes the process well in chapter 6 of her book "The Creative Habit: Learn It and Use It for Life".
If you're into art and image-based work, Aby Warburg had a zettelkasten with images. Search for details on his "Mnemosyne Atlas" at The Warburg Institute at the School of Advanced Study University of London which has some material you may appreciate.
Product designer khimtan has a visual zettelkasten practice you can find examples of on Reddit in the "Antinet" sub.
A variety of comedians like Phyllis Diller, Joan Rivers, Bob Hope, and George Carlin had zettelkasten practices for their comedy work.
Eminem has a fantastic, but tremendously simple zettelkasten for songwriting. Taylor Swift has a somewhat similar digital version which she has talked about using, though she doesn't use the word zettelkasten to describe it.
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any easy strategies to improve my notetaking?
reply to u/all_flowers_in_time_ at https://www.reddit.com/r/NoteTaking/comments/12g3idj/any_easy_strategies_to_improve_my_notetaking/
In many ways I was just like you in school...
Some of it depends on what your notes are for. Are you using them to write things in your own words to increase understanding and tie them into other ideas? Are you using them as reminders? Are you using them to build material for later (papers, articles, write a book, other?) For memorization?
Your notes look like they've got a Cornell Notes appearance, so perhaps more formally structuring your pages that way will help? Creating sample test questions afterward for practice and recall can be highly useful and force you to create answers which is dramatically more productive than simply reviewing over notes which usually creates a false sense of familiarity.
If you're using them for memorization, then perhaps convert the notes after lecture into flash cards (physical cards, Anki, Mnemosyne, etc.) that you can use for spaced repetition.
If you're using them to later create other content, then perhaps a commonplace book or zettelkasten structure may be helpful for cross indexing ideas. If you're not familiar with these, try out the following book which covers all of these use cases and mores:
Ahrens, Sönke. How to Take Smart Notes: One Simple Technique to Boost Writing, Learning and Thinking – for Students, Academics and Nonfiction Book Writers. Create Space, 2017.
I wish I had been able to do so when I was a student.
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Benefits of sharing permanent notes .t3_12gadut._2FCtq-QzlfuN-SwVMUZMM3 { --postTitle-VisitedLinkColor: #9b9b9b; --postTitleLink-VisitedLinkColor: #9b9b9b; --postBodyLink-VisitedLinkColor: #989898; }
reply to u/bestlunchtoday at https://www.reddit.com/r/Zettelkasten/comments/12gadut/benefits_of_sharing_permanent_notes/
I love the diversity of ideas here! So many different ways to do it all and perspectives on the pros/cons. It's all incredibly idiosyncratic, just like our notes.
I probably default to a far extreme of sharing the vast majority of my notes openly to the public (at least the ones taken digitally which account for probably 95%). You can find them here: https://hypothes.is/users/chrisaldrich.
Not many people notice or care, but I do know that a small handful follow and occasionally reply to them or email me questions. One or two people actually subscribe to them via RSS, and at least one has said that they know more about me, what I'm reading, what I'm interested in, and who I am by reading these over time. (I also personally follow a handful of people and tags there myself.) Some have remarked at how they appreciate watching my notes over time and then seeing the longer writing pieces they were integrated into. Some novice note takers have mentioned how much they appreciate being able to watch such a process of note taking turned into composition as examples which they might follow. Some just like a particular niche topic and follow it as a tag (so if you were interested in zettelkasten perhaps?) Why should I hide my conversation with the authors I read, or with my own zettelkasten unless it really needed to be private? Couldn't/shouldn't it all be part of "The Great Conversation"? The tougher part may be having means of appropriately focusing on and sharing this conversation without some of the ills and attention economy practices which plague the social space presently.
There are a few notes here on this post that talk about social media and how this plays a role in making them public or not. I suppose that if I were putting it all on a popular platform like Twitter or Instagram then the use of the notes would be or could be considered more performative. Since mine are on what I would call a very quiet pseudo-social network, but one specifically intended for note taking, they tend to be far less performative in nature and the majority of the focus is solely on what I want to make and use them for. I have the opportunity and ability to make some private and occasionally do so. Perhaps if the traffic and notice of them became more prominent I would change my habits, but generally it has been a net positive to have put my sensemaking out into the public, though I will admit that I have a lot of privilege to be able to do so.
Of course for those who just want my longer form stuff, there's a website/blog for that, though personally I think all the fun ideas at the bleeding edge are in my notes.
Since some (u/deafpolygon, u/Magnifico99, and u/thiefspy; cc: u/FastSascha, u/A_Dull_Significance) have mentioned social media, Instagram, and journalists, I'll share a relevant old note with an example, which is also simultaneously an example of the benefit of having public notes to be able to point at, which u/PantsMcFail2 also does here with one of Andy Matuschak's public notes:
[Prominent] Journalist John Dickerson indicates that he uses Instagram as a commonplace: https://www.instagram.com/jfdlibrary/ here he keeps a collection of photo "cards" with quotes from famous people rather than photos. He also keeps collections there of photos of notes from scraps of paper as well as photos of annotations he makes in books.
It's reasonably well known that Ronald Reagan shared some of his personal notes and collected quotations with his speechwriting staff while he was President. I would say that this and other similar examples of collaborative zettelkasten or collaborative note taking and their uses would blunt u/deafpolygon's argument that shared notes (online or otherwise) are either just (or only) a wiki. The forms are somewhat similar, but not all exactly the same. I suspect others could add to these examples.
And of course if you've been following along with all of my links, you'll have found yourself reading not only these words here, but also reading some of a directed conversation with entry points into my own personal zettelkasten, which you can also query as you like. I hope it has helped to increase the depth and level of the conversation, should you choose to enter into it. It's an open enough one that folks can pick and choose their own path through it as their interests dictate.
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To buy or not to buy a course? And, if the latter, which one? .t3_12fowjy._2FCtq-QzlfuN-SwVMUZMM3 { --postTitle-VisitedLinkColor: #9b9b9b; --postTitleLink-VisitedLinkColor: #9b9b9b; --postBodyLink-VisitedLinkColor: #989898; } questionSo, I've been considering buying an online course for Zettelkasten (in Obsidian). Thing is... There are a bunch of them. Two (maybe three) questions:Is it worth it? Has anyone gone down that path and care to share their experience?Any recommendations? I've seen a bunch of options and really don't have any hints on how to evaluate them.
reply to u/Accomplished-Tip-597 at https://www.reddit.com/r/Zettelkasten/comments/12fowjy/to_buy_or_not_to_buy_a_course_and_if_the_latter/
Which "industry", though? Productivity? Personal Knowledge Management? Neither of these are focused on the idea of a Luhmann-esque specific zettelkastenare they?
For the original poster, what is your goal in taking a course? What do you want to get out of it? What are you going to use such a system for? The advice you're looking for will hinge on these.
Everyone's use is going to be reasonably idiosyncratic, so not knowing anything else, my general recommendation (to minimize time, effort, and expense) would be to read one of the following (for free), practice at some of it for a few weeks before you do anything else. Then if you need it, talk u/taurusnoises into a few consultations based on what you'd like to accomplish. He's one of the few who does this who's got experience in the widest variety of traditions in addition to expertise in the platform you want (though I'd still recommend him if you were using something else.)
- https://zettelkasten.de/posts/overview/
- https://minnstate.pressbooks.pub/write/ (just 1-7, though the rest is profitable)
- https://www.academia.edu/35101285/Creating_a_Commonplace_Book_CPB_
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How best to incorporate a book of terms? .t3_12e2r50._2FCtq-QzlfuN-SwVMUZMM3 { --postTitle-VisitedLinkColor: #9b9b9b; --postTitleLink-VisitedLinkColor: #9b9b9b; --postBodyLink-VisitedLinkColor: #989898; } questionHi, so my Zettelkasten is mainly based around learning literary/storytelling techniques. There's a book called the Elements of Eloquence (which I can't recommend enough to those interested in language) which lays down a large number of formulas from rhetoric for creating memorable lines. It varies in complexity from alliteration to hendiadys, and contains 39 of these memorable-line-recipes in total.I want to enter them into my vault, but worry that creating 39 new notes for the individual formula might be overkill. I thought I'd ask here as I am worried about irreducibility - do I create a single note that contains brief descriptions of all the recipes, or fill my zettelkasten with them, creating what feels a little bit like spam?I've had the zettelkasten for a while but have been too busy to properly use it until recently, so I thought I'd be better off asking the people with actual experience!
reply to u/apricotsareweird at r/Zettelkasten - How best to incorporate a book of terms?
This sounds a bit like it might fit into the mold of an example like Brian Eno and Peter Schmidt's "Oblique Strategies" which are bits of creative advice that one draws out at random to help improve their work. You could have a custom deck for potential writing work and attempt the recipes at random to see where it takes you. At worst a collection of them could be used for spaced repetition to memorize or familiarize yourself with them. At a later date you could give them numbers and install them into a larger collection, but keeping them as a stand alone collection certainly couldn't hurt at least to start.
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How do I store when coming across an actual FACT? .t3_12bvcmn._2FCtq-QzlfuN-SwVMUZMM3 { --postTitle-VisitedLinkColor: #9b9b9b; --postTitleLink-VisitedLinkColor: #9b9b9b; --postBodyLink-VisitedLinkColor: #989898; } questionLet's say I am trying to absorb a 30min documentary about the importance of sleep and the term human body cells is being mentioned, I want to remember what a "Cell" is so I make a note "What is a Cell in a Human Body?", search the google, find the definition and paste it into this note, my concern is, what is this note considered, a fleeting, literature, or permanent? how do I tag it...
reply to u/iamharunjonuzi at https://www.reddit.com/r/Zettelkasten/comments/12bvcmn/how_do_i_store_when_coming_across_an_actual_fact/
How central is the fact to what you're working at potentially developing? Often for what may seem like basic facts that are broadly useful, but not specific to things I'm actively developing, I'll leave basic facts like that as short notes on the source/reference cards (some may say literature notes) where I found them rather than writing them out in full as their own cards.
If I were a future biologist, as a student I might consider that I would soon know really well what a cell was and not bother to have a primary zettel on something so commonplace unless I was collecting various definitions to compare and contrast for something specific. Alternately as a non-biologist or someone that doesn't use the idea frequently, then perhaps it may merit more space for connecting to others?
Of course you can always have it written along with the original source and "promote" it to its own card later if you feel it's necessary, so you're covered either way. I tend to put the most interesting and surprising ideas into my main box to try to maximize what comes back out of it. If there were 2 more interesting ideas than the definition of cell in that documentary, then I would probably leave the definition with the source and focus on the more important ideas as their own zettels.
As a rule of thumb, for those familiar with Bloom's taxonomy in education, I tend to leave the lower level learning-based notes relating to remembering and understanding as shorter (literature) notes on the source's reference card and use the main cards for the higher levels (apply, analyze, evaluate, create).
Ultimately, time, practice, and experience will help you determine for yourself what is most useful and where. Until you've developed a feel for what works best for you, just write it down somewhere and you can't really go too far wrong.
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Hi I am getting confused as to how to tackle a whole book or research paper and the production of notes. I'm doing a literature review as part of a phd, so academic level critique needed. The referencing I can easily cite at the end of the note so that isn't a concern. Does one research paper produce many notes, how does one title these notes please? Is it the concept or the book etc. thank you (sorry I am trying to move this to the other section but cannot see how to do this, I realise I've posted in the wrong place) Zoe
reply to ZH215 at https://forum.zettelkasten.de/discussion/2545/lit-review-template-or-not#latest
For a literature review, you might find Adler & Van Doren more immediate and interesting (compared to Ahrens), particularly chapter 20 on syntopical reading. This may help you to better focus your annotating and note making practices. Consider it a big conversation, but all the participants are writing instead of speaking.
Adler, Mortimer J., and Charles Van Doren. How to Read a Book: The Classical Guide to Intelligent Reading. Revised and Updated edition. 1940. Reprint, Touchstone, 2011.
While the more significant notes can be useful in the long run and can be used as the backbone of your work, I often personally find that my shorter annotations and highlights/tags in a literature review are incredibly helpful for comparison and contrast later, so don't discount the value of these.
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Just getting started with #Zettelkasten while preparing for my first participation in a workshop. How do you decide on the names/keys of your zettels? E.g., "object-oriented programming" or "rentsch1982object"? Or do you have one zettel for each of both? #academia @academia@a.gup.pe @academicchatter@a.gup.pe @academicsunite@a.gup.pe #zettelkasten @academia@a.gup.pe @zettelkasten@a.gup.pe @zettelkasten@mobilize.berlin
reply to Christoph Thiede at https://norden.social/@LinqLover/110011970287271976
@LinqLover@norden.social @academia@a.gup.pe @zettelkasten@a.gup.pe @zettelkasten@mobilize.berlin @academicchatter@a.gup.pe @academicsunite@a.gup.pe If I understand your question properly, you're presumably using a paper zettelkasten and not a digital one? The issue is that of "multiple storage". Niklas Luhmann solved this by numbering his cards (using a Dewey-like system) and then creating an index for the subjects to be able to find them. John Locke did roughly the same thing with his indexing method for commonplace books.
cf. https://hypothes.is/users/chrisaldrich?q=tag%3A%22multiple+storage%22 and https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/john-lockes-method-for-common-place-books-1685
In the digital domain I rely on relational databases or heavy tagging and digital search. For an example, see again the Hypothesis link above.
"Classical" ZK prior to Luhmann simply made multiple copies and distributed them, though updating them was nearly impossible.
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I am analogue all the way. I have found I store information on the computer and then forget it is there. It is too easy to copy and paste with out really comprehending and learning. To pick up a book and flip through it resonates deeply with in me. Surprisingly I can usually find what I have written with out much effort. At present I am using index cards as to index the books (and documents saved on the computer).I am not anti-tech; I use the computer for graphics, designing, my recipe collection (oddly enough) and spending entirely to much time on reddit! Writing by hand, and considering how to reference-index, tends to help the ideas stay in my memory better. Books and index cards are fantastic to take outside and work on in the sun, laptops and tablets not so much!Scanning the books and keeping a digital index sounds like a good idea. Chances of damage to a treasured commonplace book --- scary to consider.
reply to u/zleonska at https://www.reddit.com/r/commonplacebook/comments/1223a2e/comment/jdp8nbl/?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=web2x&context=3
Thanks for sharing this u/zleonska! More people might consider using a card index to index their commonplace books for future search and discovery. The first person I'd ever come across doing this was W. Ross Ashby whose commonplace and index have been digitized and are now searchable online at http://www.rossashby.info/journal/index/index.html. It seems a nice change of pace to have a centralized index over keeping one in each book and having to search in multiple books over time as described in John Locke's commonplacing method, though it obviously seems to have made a significant impact.<br /> If folks find it interesting/useful I did come across https://www.indxd.ink, a digital, web-based index tool for your analog notebooks. Ostensibly allows one to digitally index their paper notebooks (page numbers optional). It emails you weekly text updates, so you've got a back up of your data if the site/service disappears. This could potentially be used by those who have analog commonplace/zettelkasten practices, but want the digital search and some back up of their system.
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JSTOR has at least a dozen articles/journal entries in English referencing "zettelkasten" (mostly disparagingly). I searched a while back, and the earliest I found then was from 1967. But, there were others from the 70s, 80s, 90s, etc.
reply to u/taurusnoises at https://www.reddit.com/r/Zettelkasten/comments/11ov8qp/comment/jbvdyx8/?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=web2x&context=3
Thanks for the tip Bob, JSTOR was a reasonably quick/easy search (compared to the larger list I've got that'll take some manual digging.) The vast majority of instances I found within JSTOR were in full German contexts, and many definitely were in a negative contextual light (generally as an epithet—one went so far as to mention a smell— describing authors' poor structure, over-reliance on ZK, argument, or writing style, potentially as not providing appropriate context.) Fascinatingly the number of appearances of zettelkasten in any language began in the early 1900s and have grown from a dozen every decade to 150 this past decade with a marked increase in the 1980s and 90s.
The oldest one I found in an English language article was from:
Hayes, William C. Review of Historical Records of Rameses III, by William F. Edgerton and John A. Wilson. American Journal of Archaeology 40, no. 4 (1936): 558–59. https://doi.org/10.2307/498809. (JSTOR https://www.jstor.org/stable/498809)
All available earlier copies and parallel texts have been diligently consulted and compared with the present versions and the authors have also availed themselves of the invaluable material contained in the Zettelkasten of the Berlin Wörterbuch der ägyptischen Sprache.
Potentially not the very first English appearance, but 1936 is reasonably early. I wasn't surprised that it appeared in an archaeology journal.
Of particular interest is that it provides an indication that the "Berlin Dictionary" or the Dictionary of the Egyptian Language, which was begun in 1897 just two years after the beginning of the Mundaneum by Paul Otlet and Henri La Fontaine, began life as a multi-user zettelkasten. For those who are looking for the rare versions of collaborative zettelkasten, this is a new version for folks to research.
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What type of note did Niklas Luhmann average 6 times a day? .t3_11z08fq._2FCtq-QzlfuN-SwVMUZMM3 { --postTitle-VisitedLinkColor: #9b9b9b; --postTitleLink-VisitedLinkColor: #9b9b9b; --postBodyLink-VisitedLinkColor: #989898; }
reply to u/dotphrasealpha at https://www.reddit.com/r/Zettelkasten/comments/11z08fq/what_type_of_note_did_niklas_luhmann_average_6/
The true insight you're looking for here is: Forget the numbers and just aim for quality followed very closely by consistency!
Of course most will ignore my insight and experience and be more interested in the numbers, so let's query a the 30+ notes I've got on this topic in my own zettelkasten to answer the distal question.
Over the 45 years from 1952 to 1997 Luhmann produced approximately 90,000 slips which averages out to:
- 45 years * 365 days/year = 16,425 days
- 90,000 slips / 16,425 days = 5.47 slips per day
In a video, Ahrens indicates that Luhmann didn't make notes on weekends, and if true, this would revise the count to 7.69 slips per day.
260 working days a year (on average, not accounting for leap years or potential governmental holidays)
- 45 years x 260 work days/year = 11,700 days
- 90,000 slips / 11,700 days = 7.69 slips per day
Compare these closer numbers to Ahrens' stated and often quoted 6 notes per day in How to Take Smart Notes.
I've counted from the start of '52 through all of '97 to get 45 years, but the true amount of time was a bit shorter than this in reality, so the number of days should be slightly smaller.
Keep in mind that Luhmann worked at this roughly full time for decades, so don't try to measure yourself against him. (He also published in a different era and broadly without the hurdle of peer review.) Again: Aim for quality over quantity! If it helps, S.D. Goitein created a zettelkasten of 27,000 notes which he used to publish almost a third more papers and books than Luhmann. Wittgenstein left far fewer notes and only published one book during his lifetime, but published a lot posthumously and was massively influential. Similarly Roland Barthes had only about 12,500 slips and loads of influential work.
I keep notes on various historical practitioners' notes/day output over several decades using these sorts of practices. Most are in the 1-2 notes per day range. A sampling of them can be found here: https://boffosocko.com/2023/01/14/s-d-goiteins-card-index-or-zettelkasten/#Notes%20per%20day.
Anecdotally, I've found that most of the more serious people here and on the zettelkasten.de forum are in the 4-10 slips per week range.
<whisper>quality...</whisper>
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www.theatlantic.com www.theatlantic.com
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talking to ChatGPT began to feel like every other interaction one has on the internet, where some guy (always a guy) tries to convert the skim of a Wikipedia article into a case of definitive expertise. Except ChatGPT was always willing to admit that it was wrong.
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What do you guys think of this note taking style? (Just follow the arrows from one box to another)
reply to u/mouseVed at https://www.reddit.com/r/NoteTaking/comments/11xu4vh/what_do_you_guys_think_of_this_note_taking_style/
Looks a tad messy to me, but I'm not the audience for it, you are. Some additional empty space on the page could potentially help. If this style works for you, perhaps take a look at the sketchnotes space. This book might be a good place to start (especially the sections on Visual Direction, Headers, and Layouts:<br /> Mills, Emily. The Art of Visual Notetaking: An Interactive Guide to Visual Communication and Sketchnoting. Illustrated edition. Walter Foster Publishing, 2019.
If you're keen on location as a key to memory and learning, you should also take a look at the idea of the 'method of loci'/memory palaces/songlines. The best modern coverage of this and various methods can be found in:<br /> Kelly, Lynne. Memory Craft: Improve Your Memory Using the Most Powerful Methods from around the World. Pegasus Books, 2019.
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If I have many notes, is it more effective to load into chapters, or into ZK, organise, then load into chapters? .t3_11xcnqg._2FCtq-QzlfuN-SwVMUZMM3 { --postTitle-VisitedLinkColor: #9b9b9b; --postTitleLink-VisitedLinkColor: #9b9b9b; --postBodyLink-VisitedLinkColor: #989898; }
reply to u/jaybestnz https://www.reddit.com/r/Zettelkasten/comments/11xcnqg/if_i_have_many_notes_is_it_more_effective_to_load/
Part of the benefit of having a Luhmann-esque structured ZK, which is what I'm presuming your definition of a zettelkasten is, is that you're doing some of the interconnecting and building links and structures along the way. Instead, you'll now be doing that work after the fact and en-masse.
The underlying question is: do you plan on keeping and maintaining a more Luhmann-esque zettelkasten after your book? If you do, then it may be useful to take that step, otherwise, you're likely doing additional work that you may not see benefit from.
Making some broad assumptions about what you may have so far... If you've got physical index cards, things will be easier to collate and arrange. In your case, the closest (easy) workflow is that of Ryan Holiday who outlines his process in this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dU7efgGEOgk
Beyond this, your next best bets might be informed by:
- Dustin Lance Black: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vrvawtrRxsw
- Victor Margolin: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kxyy0THLfuI
If you prefer your writing structural advice in written form, then perhaps you're already in the latter part of the process broadly described by Umberto Eco in How to Write a Thesis (MIT, 2015).
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I guess a collection of notes is now a zettelkasten.
Don't be blinded by availability bias. It was historically almost always thus! Especially in Germany. (The French have traditionally called it a fichier boîte and in English it's the card index.) It's only been since the rise in popularity of the use of the German word in English (beginning in late 2013 with zettelkasten.de) where it has almost always been associated with Niklas Luhmann that has has most people now associating Luhmann's method with the word Zettelkasten.
If you look back at the 2013 exhibition "Zettelkästen. Machines of Fantasy" at the Museum of Modern Literature, Marbach am Neckar, you'll notice that there were six zettelkasten featured there including those of Arno Schmidt, Walter Kempowski, Friedrich Kittler, Aby Warburg, Paul, Blumenberg, and Luhmann. Of those, the structure of Luhmann's was the exception which wasn't primarily organized broadly by subject heading. You'll also find some historians and sociologists organizing theirs by date or geographic regions as well as other custom arrangements as their needs and work might dictate.
The preponderance of books talking about these note taking methods suggest a topic heading arrangement for filing, including the book by Johnannes Erich Heyde from which Luhmann's son has indicated he learned an old technique from which he evolved his own practice.
See also:
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The Two Definitions of Zettelkasten https://boffosocko.com/2022/10/22/the-two-definitions-of-zettelkasten/
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Heyde, Johannes Erich. Technik des wissenschaftlichen Arbeitens: zeitgemässe Mittel und Verfahrungsweisen. Junker und Dünnhaupt, 1931.
Rarely does a week go by that I don't run across another new/significant example of a zettelkasten. Thanks u/atomicnotes for keeping up the pace with James Peter Zollinger. (Though this week may be a twofer given my notes on Ludwig Wittgenstein's over the last few days.)
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forum.artofmemory.com forum.artofmemory.com
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The Mountains of Pi
Not sure of the truth of the story either @Josh, but thanks for the trip down memory lane. My math teacher gave me that article when I was in the 12th grade because he knew I had been variously killing time in his math classes since 9th grade memorizing the first 8,000 digits of pi and reading for fun.
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forum.zettelkasten.de forum.zettelkasten.de
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"Personal Knowledge Management Is Bullshit"
reply to jameslongley at https://forum.zettelkasten.de/discussion/2532/personal-knowledge-management-is-bullshit
I find that these sorts of articles against the variety of practices have one thing in common: the writer fails to state a solid and realistic reason for why they got into it in the first place. They either have no reason "why" or, perhaps, just as often have all-the-reasons "why", which may be worse. Much of this is bound up in the sort of signaling and consumption which @Sascha outlines in point C (above).
Perhaps of interest, there are a large number of Hypothes.is annotations on that original article written by a variety of sense-makers with whom I am familiar. See: https://via.hypothes.is/https://www.otherlife.co/pkm/ Of note, many come from various note making traditions including: commonplace books, bloggers, writers, wiki creators, zettelkasten, digital gardening, writers, thinkers, etc., so they give a broader and relatively diverse perspective. If I were pressed to say what most of them have in common philosophically, I'd say it was ownership of their thought.
Perhaps it's just a point of anecdotal evidence, but I've been noticing that who write about or use the phrase "personal knowledge management" are ones who come at the space without an actual practice or point of view on what they're doing and why—they are either (trying to be) influencers or influencees.
Fortunately it is entirely possible to "fake it until you make it" here, but it helps to have an idea of what you're trying to make.
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It's not a ZK furniture though. Index cards were not used to store atomic notes, or have alphanumeric indexes. :)
Oh, but it is ZK furniture in every sense! The narrow definition of zettelkasten in common use (in this subreddit and in many other locations on the internet) to describe only card indexes/digital software which have the numbering scheme and form of Niklas Luhmann's only works for his and a number of imitators from roughly 2007/2013 to the present. Prior to this it is a much more generic term in Germany and elsewhere known in English as a card index or card file, but academics and others have been using practices broadly similar to Luhmann's for centuries in a variety of forms.
You're likely right that this particular piece of furniture had a business-specific market use case for the majority of its users, but I'm sure there was a subset of customers, particularly those in academia, which may have used it primarily as a note storage or personal knowledge management tool in a way highly similar to Luhmann's. Because it was in America, it was unlikely to have been called by the German name zettelkasten, though there were many German-Americans (Gotthard Deutsch and S. D. Goitein come to mind) who had this practice and may have done so, though I've seen no direct evidence of this at present in their writings. Not all card indexes were used for business or library purposes. In addition to academic researchers, we know a variety of mid-century comedians used their card indexes for collation and storage of jokes over their careers.
The quality of the advertisement is hard to make out, but on close examination it appears to have four drawers and the scale leads me to think that this would likely have accommodated 3 x 5" index cards. Some upcoming research work may uncover the manufacturing specifics and I'll share them as I find them.
As for Harrison and Placcius they're definitely there and people talk about them occasionally, though few seem as interested in the historical aspects despite the fact that they have a lot to demonstrate about the pros/cons of various practices. I remember adding them both to the English wikipedia page in July 2021. Certainly they could stand to be more widely known for their work, as could Leibniz. More on both can be found mentioned in the following: - Cevolini, Alberto. “Where Does Niklas Luhmann’s Card Index Come From?” Erudition and the Republic of Letters 3, no. 4 (October 24, 2018): 390–420. https://doi.org/10.1163/24055069-00304002. - Blair, Ann M. Too Much to Know: Managing Scholarly Information before the Modern Age. Yale University Press, 2010. https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300165395/too-much-know. - Blei, Daniela. “How the Index Card Cataloged the World.” The Atlantic, December 1, 2017. https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2017/12/how-the-index-card-catalogued-the-world/547271/. - Vincentius Placcius. De arte excerpendi. Vom Gelahrten Buchhalten Liber singularis, quo genera et praecepta excerpendi... Gottfried Liebezeit, 1689. http://archive.org/details/bub_gb_IgMVAAAAQAAJ.
There's also a bit on Placcius in: - Krajewski, Markus. Paper Machines: About Cards & Catalogs, 1548-1929. Translated by Peter Krapp. History and Foundations of Information Science. MIT Press, 2011. https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/paper-machines.
The bigger hero, in my opinion, is Konrad Gessner and his work from 1548 which outlined much of the common "rules" note takers, practitioners of ars excerpendi, zettelers, and card indexers have been using ever since, including an early idea which many would now call "atomic notes". Much of his work, however was transferring ideas of commonplace book practices of his day into the form of paper slips which were heavily used until mass manufacture of index cards in the 20th century made them cheap and plentiful. Within the note taking space online the community also broadly ignores influential figures like Agricola, Erasmus, and Melanchthon who make some big strides in popularizing a variety of methods in the 1400-1500s.
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thoughtfulatlas.substack.com thoughtfulatlas.substack.com
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Many of the specifics you address aren't well covered in much of the literature, and as a result often cause a lot of confusion.
The use of the / or the . in these numbers is broadly only to improve readability.
One of the major benefits of Luhmann's particular numbering method was specifically to cut way back on the overcrowding of his index in comparison with other commonplacing book indexing schemes (like that of John Locke in particular). If you look at Luhmann's index it will usually only have a 1-3 entries for each word as related material will be found in neighboring cards within a particular branch.
In point 1, it would appear that your issue is mentally equating the "top level" number with a category/topic in the first place. It's just an idea and the number is a location. Start by separating the two. You manage to do this in your own dating system by creating an abstract number, but you're simultaneously requiring yourself (or a computer) to build up a date-based number which requires additional, unnecessary work. Your system is equivalent to all the others if you cut off the date-based root.
Perhaps the following two articles may be of some help in thinking through what you're doing: - On The Interdisciplinarity of Zettelkasten: Card Numbering, Topical Headings, and Indices https://boffosocko.com/2023/01/19/on-the-interdisciplinarity-of-zettelkasten-card-numbering-topical-headings-and-indices/ - Thoughts on Zettelkasten numbering systems https://boffosocko.com/2022/10/27/thoughts-on-zettelkasten-numbering-systems/
Of course at the end of the day, it's the system that works for you and the way you think that works best, so if none of it makes sense, then definitely use your own method.
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Is there a way to collapse all headings at once? .t3_11lgicl._2FCtq-QzlfuN-SwVMUZMM3 { --postTitle-VisitedLinkColor: #9b9b9b; --postTitleLink-VisitedLinkColor: #9b9b9b; --postBodyLink-VisitedLinkColor: #989898; }
I don't think it requires a plugin, but you can go to Settings >> Hotkeys and search for "fold" to create/change custom hotkey settings to fold up/down as necessary.
Another approach with a potentially similar affordance: Obsidian has a core plugin called "Outline" that you can enable. Then open the palette to search/select: "Outline: Show Outline" which will display in a sidebar (you can drag/drop it where you find most convenient). This side outline will allow you to easily jump around your document for various views as well as show you the overarching outline while you're working on a document. It will also allow you to conveniently collapse parts of the outline too.
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All my final notes are in one folder. They are named using the zettelkasten method (YYYYMMDDhhmm). I also have an MOC (Map Of Content) folder.
I'm curious what benefit, if any, you get out of the YYYYMMDDhhmm title format other than a simple date ordered listing of files?
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How do you guys organize Zettelkasten notes? .t3_11jiein._2FCtq-QzlfuN-SwVMUZMM3 { --postTitle-VisitedLinkColor: #9b9b9b; --postTitleLink-VisitedLinkColor: #9b9b9b; --postBodyLink-VisitedLinkColor: #989898; }
Beyond having "notes", what are you really trying to accomplish by doing this?
How are you defining "zettelkasten"? Is your conceptualization closer to that of a commonplace book/wiki/linked notes or a Luhmann-esque structure? If you're going the Luhmann route, then it really helps to have a specific reason, output, or a goal in mind for what you're doing and then keep it as simple as possible. I'd recommend you keep it separate (perhaps using folders) from your to do lists/productivity/projects type material or you'll risk the issue of zettelkasten overreach.
If you don't need the "full Luhmann", then perhaps ease your way in?
Some useful resources/thinking that go beyond the hundreds of one-page zettelkasten blog post intros:
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After you've read a bit you may have some idea of some of the topics you'd like to cover and can begin creating an outline of what you'd like to express. Create a blank page and start the shape of the outline. As you proceed, you'll have an idea of a few specific notes that will fit under individual areas. What are those notes linked to? Perhaps add them as well if appropriate. As you outline you can add markup like
![[noteA]]
to your outline which, in preview mode, will render or transclude the contents of that note and any others similarly formatted. Once you've done this with lots of notes you can copy/paste the contents into a draft which you can massage into finished form. Perhaps Obsidian's Canvas functionality might be helpful for you as well for mapping out the ideas/outline? It's at this point that many people realize how useful physical paper cards are for doing this process. The user interface and affordances in this last mile of output with respect to a digital tool is definitely a general drawback. This short video may be somewhat helpful for some of the process: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kxyy0THLfuI
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en.forum.saysomethingin.com en.forum.saysomethingin.com
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Slow learner
reply to jo-king
https://en.forum.saysomethingin.com/t/slow-learner/38360/8
I don't do it as much as I did when I started out, but I would put the audio files into a podcatcher that allowed me to speed up or slow down the audio. The first time through I would slow the audio down to 75% of full speed so I didn't need to fiddle so much with the pause button (especially when I was listening while commuting or doing other household chores). Then I'd speed it up a bit each time until I was able to do 1.10 or 1.25x speed at which point the pauses weren't long enough to get a word in edgewise. At this point I move on to the next. Be careful here though as on some of the longer sentences at the ends of some lessons, if you play them too slowly, you'll forget what the beginning of the sentence was by the time they get to the end.
Based on a trick in my daughter's dual immersion Japanese class which used the word "wakanai" (Japanese for "I don't know"), I also formed the practice of saying "ddim gwybod" in place of words I couldn't immediately remember so that I could focus on the ones I did know instead of getting too tripped up on the ones I didn't. Eventually on repetition and revision they would slowly seep into my brain. Fortunately the kind and patient instructors on the tape never made fun of me or judged me for my mistakes and that made it much easier to eventually pick things up.
Sticking with it has become quite fun and it definitely gets easier with time. pob lwc!
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how did you teach yourself zettelkasten? .t3_11ay28d._2FCtq-QzlfuN-SwVMUZMM3 { --postTitle-VisitedLinkColor: #9b9b9b; --postTitleLink-VisitedLinkColor: #9b9b9b; --postBodyLink-VisitedLinkColor: #989898; }
reply to u/laystitcher at https://www.reddit.com/r/Zettelkasten/comments/11ay28d/how_did_you_teach_yourself_zettelkasten/
Roughly in order: - Sixth grade social studies class assignment that used a "traditional" index card-based note taking system. - Years of annotating books - Years of blogging - Havens, Earle. Commonplace Books: A History of Manuscripts and Printed Books from Antiquity to the Twentieth Century. New Haven, CT: Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, 2001. - Locke, John, 1632-1704. A New Method of Making Common-Place-Books. 1685. Reprint, London, 1706. https://archive.org/details/gu_newmethodmaki00lock/mode/2up. - Erasmus, Desiderius. Literary and Educational Writings, 1 and 2. Edited by Craig R. Thompson. Vol. 23 & 24. Collected Works of Erasmus. Toronto, Buffalo, London: University of Toronto Press, 1978. https://utorontopress.com/9781487520731/collected-works-of-erasmus. - Kuehn, Manfred. Taking Note, A blog on the nature of note-taking. December 2007 - December 2018. https://web.archive.org/web/20181224085859/http://takingnotenow.blogspot.com/ - Ahrens, Sönke. How to Take Smart Notes: One Simple Technique to Boost Writing, Learning and Thinking – for Students, Academics and Nonfiction Book Writers. Create Space, 2017. - Sertillanges, Antonin Gilbert, and Mary Ryan. The Intellectual Life: Its Spirit, Conditions, Methods. First English Edition, Fifth printing. 1921. Reprint, Westminster, MD: The Newman Press, 1960. http://archive.org/details/a.d.sertillangestheintellectuallife. - Webb, Beatrice Potter. Appendix C of My Apprenticeship. First Edition. New York: Longmans, Green & Co., 1926. - Schmidt, Johannes F. K. “Niklas Luhmann’s Card Index: The Fabrication of Serendipity.” Sociologica 12, no. 1 (July 26, 2018): 53–60. https://doi.org/10.6092/issn.1971-8853/8350. - Hollier, Denis. “Notes (On the Index Card).” October 112, no. Spring (2005): 35–44. - Wilken, Rowan. “The Card Index as Creativity Machine.” Culture Machine 11 (2010): 7–30. - Blair, Ann M. Too Much to Know: Managing Scholarly Information before the Modern Age. Yale University Press, 2010. https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300165395/too-much-know. - Krajewski, Markus. Paper Machines: About Cards & Catalogs, 1548-1929. Translated by Peter Krapp. History and Foundations of Information Science. MIT Press, 2011. https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/paper-machines. - Goutor, Jacques. The Card-File System of Note-Taking. Approaching Ontario’s Past 3. Toronto: Ontario Historical Society, 1980. http://archive.org/details/cardfilesystemof0000gout.
And many, many others as I'm a student of intellectual history.... If you want to go spelunking on some of my public notes, perhaps this is an interesting place to start: https://hypothes.is/users/chrisaldrich?q=tag%3A%22note+taking%22 I also keep a reasonable public bibliography on this and related areas: https://www.zotero.org/groups/4676190/tools_for_thought
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Analog Supplies
I should mention that the Stockroom Plus 4 x 6" cards I got a while back are great with even my juiciest fountain pens. They're some of the least expensive gridded cards I've been able to find and are a fraction of the cost of the Exacompta.
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Analog Supplies .t3_11erqdi._2FCtq-QzlfuN-SwVMUZMM3 { --postTitle-VisitedLinkColor: #9b9b9b; --postTitleLink-VisitedLinkColor: #9b9b9b; --postBodyLink-VisitedLinkColor: #989898; }
- The Ultimate Guide to Zettelkasten Index Card Storage
- Index Card Accessories for Note Taking on the Go
- Be sure to check the comments for other options; I ended up binding my own using glue and chipboard which is both easy and inexpensive.
- For cost, custom made/printed slips may be the way to go for great paper if you're all-in. Many stationery/paper shops can help you custom design something.
- I've heard good things about Exacompa/Bristol index cards for fountain pens, but not tried them personally. They can tend toward the expensive side.
- Card bleachers and desk-based display options
- This playing card set is what I ultimately opted for
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level 2A_Dull_SignificanceOp · 2 hr. agoYes! When I run across a comment on a book I haven’t read yet but seems interesting I make a little card with the comment and book title2ReplyGive AwardShareReportSaveFollowlevel 2taurusnoises · 2 hr. agoObsidianSo, you keep the titles of books you want to read organized in folgezettel (you give them an alphanumeric ID?) among your ZK notes? That's really interesting!
I've done something like this when I think a particular reference(s) can answer a question related to a train of thought. But I keep cards of unread sources at the front of my sources section so that it's easier to pull it out frequently to prioritize and decide what I should be reading or working on next. These will then have links to the open questions I've noted, so that I can go back to those sections either as I'm reading/writing or to add those ideas into the appropriate folgezettel. These sorts of small amounts of work documented briefly can add up quickly over time. Source cards with indications of multiple open questions that might be answered is sometimes a good measure of desire to read, though other factors can also be at play.
That to-read pile of bibliographic source notes (a mini antilibrary) is akin to walking into a party and surveying a room. I may be aware of some of the people I haven't met yet and the conversations we might have, but if there are interesting questions I know I want to ask of specific ones or conversations I already know I want to have, it can be more productive to visit those first.
This sort of practice has been particularly helpful for times when I want to double check someone's sources or an original context, but don't have the time to do it immediately, don't want to break another extended train of thought, have to wait on materials, or may have to make a trip to consult physical materials that are singular or rare. For quick consultative reading, this can be a boon when I know I don't want or need to read an entire work, but skimming a chapter or a few pages for a close reading of a particular passage. I'll often keep a pile of these sorts of sources at hand so that I can make a short trip to a library, pick them up, find what I need and move on without having to recreate large portions of context to get the thing done because I've already laid most of the groundwork.
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forum.zettelkasten.de forum.zettelkasten.de
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reply https://forum.zettelkasten.de/discussion/comment/16622/#Comment_16622
Adler has an excellent primer on this subject that covers a lot of the basics in reasonable depth: - Adler, Mortimer J. “How to Mark a Book.” Saturday Review of Literature, July 6, 1940. (https://stevenson.ucsc.edu/academics/stevenson-college-core-courses/how-to-mark-a-book-1.pdf)
Marking books can be useful not only to the original reader, but future academics and historians studying material culture (eg: https://apps.lib.umich.edu/online-exhibits/exhibits/show/marks-in-books), and as @GeoEng51 indicates they might be shared by friends, family, romantic interests, or even perhaps all of the above (see: https://newcriterion.com/issues/2017/4/mrs-custers-tennyson).
For those interested in annotation marks and symbols (like @ctietze's "bolt" ↯) I outlined a few ideas this last month at: https://www.reddit.com/r/Zettelkasten/comments/10qw4l5/comment/j6vxn6a/?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=web2x&context=3
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reply lifted from my notes:
Henry David Thoreau kept both a commonplace book (essentially a traditional (non-Luhmann-esque) zettelkasten in notebook form) and a separate writing journal where he did what most would consider typical 'journaling', but where he also tried out phrasing, writing, and other experimental work that would ultimately become part of his published written output. This may be a useful model for some. His journals ran to multiple volumes, but a good edited version with a nice introduction to some of his work and methods can be found in:
- Thoreau, Henry David. The Journal: 1837-1861. Edited by Damion Searls. Original edition. New York: NYRB Classics, 2009.
Similarly Roland Barthes used his card index as more than the traditional bibliographical, excerpting, and note taking tool that many had before him. He also used it to accumulate notes on what he had seen and heard in his daily life, phrases he liked, and plans. It came to serve the function, particularly in the last two years of his life, of a diary or what biographer Tiphaine Samoyault came to call his fichierjournal or index-card diary. Published posthumously on October 12, 2010, Mourning Diary is a collection from Roland Barthes' 330 index cards focusing on his mourning following the death of his mother in 1977.
- Barthes, Roland. Mourning Diary. Macmillan, 2010. https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780374533113/mourningdiary.
- Budelis, Kristina. “Barthes’s Hand.” The New Yorker, September 8, 2010. http://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/barthess-hand.
- Samoyault, Tiphaine, and Jonathan Culler. Barthes: A Biography. Translated by Andrew Brown. 1st edition. Cambridge ; Malden, MA: Polity, 2017.
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