What was his slip total to give a notes per day calculation?

(obviously not taking into account his other work...)

Presumably this dictionary also used a card index for collection? (check...)

repetition here from before to introduce mental health...

thousands of slips...

James Murray's instructions to Miss E. Hilda Taylor in 1914 for how to read for excerpting of useful words for the Oxford English Dictionary.

Compare this with his original instructions from circa 1879.

Also: https://hypothes.is/a/3S08ysbDEe6Ca5tVAqEABQ

see: https://hypothes.is/a/rYYCXsbDEe6fpR-_EMl5Fw

It is incredibly difficult to plan in advance what to collect for any zettelkasten, even when its scope is tightly defined, like it would have been for the Oxford English Dictionary.

By the second year into his editing work on the OED, John Murray estimated that he had sent out 817,625 slips to readers.

At the average price of $0.025 for bulk index cards in 2023, this would have cost $20,440, so one must wonder at the cost of having done it. How much would this have been in March 1879 when Murray tool over editorship?

How many went out in total? Who cut them all? Surely mass manufacture didn't exist at the time for them?

Sending them out would have helped to ensure a reasonable facsimile of having cards of equal size coming back.

Perhaps one of the first sources of counting slips in weight rather than number!

This practice of writing out everything onto slips sounds like that used later (double check the timing) by the Thesaurus Linguae Latinae in creating their slip corpus for later work.

Oxford English Dictionary (1857 - )

They looked exactly like the slips sent into the OED by the Dictionary People. There was a world map

Lexicographer Sarah Ogilvie, a previous editor of the Oxford English Dictionary, said she "had worked in the OED archives for years and the contents of the Grimmwelt Museum looked identical" to them. She indicated that the similarity of the dictionary projects extended to the hundreds of volunteers, lists of words, counts of entries, etymology work, citations from published sources, and general philological methods used by the editors of the era.

The Grimmwelt Museum in Kassel, Germany is the home of some of the work of Grimm Brothers work on the Deutsches Wörterbuch which features a large wall of zettel or slips hanging from long nails.

The slips hanging on nails sounds similar to Thomas Harrison's 1740's wooden cabinet of hanging slips used for excerpts and isn't far off from the organizational structure used by the subsequent Oxford English Dictionary's pigeonhole system of organization for their slip collection.

see: https://hypothes.is/a/kVW3glq0EeyihQ834uN_Ig

Top slip contributors to OED: 1. Thomas Austin Jnr. 165,061 slips over 10 years (45.22 notes per day) 2. William Douglas 151,982 over 22 years (18.92 notes per day) 3. Thomas Nadauld Brushfield 70,277 over 28 years (1.98 notes per day) 4. William Chester Minor 62,720 slips over 23 years (to 1906) (7.5 notes per day)

Tens of thousands of books were used to draw the quotations used in the OED.

Sarah Ogilvie found a total of three address books from Dr. Murray as well as three address books from Frederick Furnivall which contained details about the three thousand or so contributors to the OED.

The scriptorium for the OED relied on shelves of pigeonholes into which the slips could be sorted and stored.

There are photos of Murray with these pigeonholes stuffed behind him. Dig one of these up.

This pigeonhole practice is in marked difference to other projects like the TLL which relied on boxes on shelves.

Considered outside of Oxford at the time, Dr. Murray fashioned the Scriptorium at his house at 78 Banbury Road. Murray received so much mail that the Royal Mail installed a red pillar box just to handle the volume.

The slips for the OED were sorted alphabetically and then grouped chronologically and by sense of meanings of the words.

Volunteer 'Readers' for the Oxford English Dictionary were encouraged to write down interesting headwords along with their appearances in-situ along with the associated bibliographical information. The recommended paper size was 4 x 6-inch pieces of paper which were commonly called 'slips'.

(Double check this against the historical requests from James Murray.)

Ogilvie, Sarah. The Dictionary People: The Unsung Heroes Who Created the Oxford English Dictionary. 1st ed. New York: Knopf, 2023. https://amzn.to/3Un0sv9.

Read from 2023-12-04 to 2024-02-01

Annotation URL: urn:x-pdf:c95483c701c7fc677e89f2c44f98a30b

I'm contemplating buying some nails to make a Brothers Grimm-esque zettelwand to arrange my next piece. Forget Post-It Notes! Chris Rock eat your heart out. (h/t Thomas Harrison, 1740s)

#OldSchool #analog #FTW

see also: https://hyp.is/lczNTMazEe6bU_fwliPccg/www.grimmwelt.de/en/exhibitions/grimmwelt

Syndication link: https://www.reddit.com/r/Zettelkasten/comments/1am3fz2/a_zettelwand/

https://www.grimmwelt.de/en/exhibitions/grimmwelt

Almay Stock image of the zettel nailed to the wall of the Grimmwelt Museum.

available at https://www.alamy.com/stock-photo-kassel-germany-04th-sep-2015-handwritten-notes-on-slips-of-paper-per-87120004.html?imageid=631BF48C-B8A9-4C47-A06D-C8D0A1977E32&p=173981&pn=1&searchId=f05b0873a45b69226316dbba98960532&searchtype=0

https://qnnnp.substack.com/p/zettelkasten-eb5

quick overview article of Luhmann research sources on his zettelkasten, nothing new to me here.

https://forum.the-big-bang-theory.com/topic/357-card-catalog/

Likely just decoration, but did Leonard or Sheldon ever interact with the card catalog in their apartment? A zettelkasten perhaps?

https://findingaids.lib.umich.edu/catalog/umich-bhl-0183

https://buyolympia.com/Item/bumper-crop-ask-me-about-my-rich-inner-life

I saw a bumper sticker on a car this afternoon that read "Ask Me About My Rich Inner Life". I think I'm going to have to buy one to put on my zettelkasten.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Zettelkasten/comments/126p7tk/what_its_like_to_have_a_conversation_with_your/

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/)

https://www.reddit.com/r/Zettelkasten/comments/1aglte6/eink_tablets/

I've yet to run across anyone excited about zettelkasten on their e-ink device. The note taking experience for writing/capturing seems to be there, but a user interface for sorting, searching, and interlinking seems to be wholly missing.

u/tylermangelson named his zettelkasten J.A.K.O.B.

https://www.reddit.com/r/antinet/comments/1aecx27/naming_my_baby_antinet/

https://www.ebay.com/itm/325982715454

35 drawer modular card catalog in light mid century modern design. Table with stick legs a 5x6 section including two pull out writing drawers, a 5x1 section and a top. Likely maple, in great shape. All wood and metal, includes all rods.

Listed in 2024-01-29 for $3995.00 with freight shipping extra from South Bend, IN

Labeled as a Centura 400 (model?)

Cost per drawer: $114.00

This is the first time I've seen a catalog from Sjöström on the market though on searching there are a handful floating around.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/276296844684

I've sketched it out elsewhere but let's memorialize the broad strokes here because we're inspired at the moment... come back later and add in quotes from Luhmann and other sources (@Heyde1931).

Luhmann was balancing the differences between topically arranged commonplaces and the topical nature of the Dewey Decimal System (a standardized version across thousands of collections) and building neighborhoods of related ideas.

One of the issues with commonplace books, is planning them out in advance. How might you split up a notebook for long term use to create easy categories when you don't know how much room to give each in advance? (If you don't believe me, stop by r/commonplacebooks where you're likely to see this question pop up several times this year.) This issue is remedied when John Locke suggests keeping commonplaces in chronological order of their appearance and cross-indexing them.

This creates a new problem of a lot of indexing and increased searching over time as the commonplace book scales. Translating to index cards complicates things because they're unattached and can potentially move about, so they don't have the anchor effectuated by their being bound up in a notebook. But being on slips allows them to be more easily shuffled, rearranged, and even put into outlines, which are all fantastic affordances when looking for creativity or scaffolding things out into an article or book for creation.

As a result, numbering slips creates a solid anchor by which the cards can be placed and always returned for later finding and use. But how should we number them? Should it be with integers and done chronologically? (1, 2, 3, ..., n) This is nice, but makes a mish-mash of things and doesn't assist much in indexing or finding.

Why not go back to Dewey, which has been so popular? But not Dewey in the broadest sense of using numbers to tie ideas to concrete categories. An individual's notes are idiosyncratic and it would be increasingly rare for people to have the same note, much less need a standardized number for it (and if they were standardized, who does that work and how is it distributed so everyone could use it?) No, instead, let's just borrow the decimal structure of Dewey's system. One of the benefits of his decimal structure is that an infinity of new books can be placed on ever-expanding bookshelves without needing to restructure the numbering system. Just keep adding decimal places onto the end when necessary. This allows for immense density when necessary. But, importantly, it also provides some fantastic level of serendipity.

Let's say you go to learn about geometry, so you look up the topic in your trusty library card catalog. Do you really need to look at the hundreds of records returned? Probably not. You only need the the Dewey Decimal Number 516. Once you're at the shelves, you can browse through that section to see what's there and interesting in the space. You might also find things on the shelves above or below 516 and find the delights of topology and number theory or abstract algebra and real analysis. Subjects you might not necessarily have had in mind will suddenly present themselves for your consideration. Even if your initial interest may have been in Zhongmin Shen's Lectures on Finsler geometry (516.375), you might also profitably walk away with James E. Humphreys' Introduction to Lie Algebras and Representation Theory (512.55).

So what happens if we use these decimal numbers for our notes? First we will have the ability to file things between and amongst each other to infinity. By filing things closest to things which seem related to each other, we'll create neighborhoods of ideas which can easily grow over time. Related ideas will stay together while seemingly related ideas on first blush may slowly grow away from each other over time as even more closely related ideas move into the neighborhood between them. With time and careful work, you'll have not only a breadth of ideas, but a massive depth of them too.

The use of decimal numbering provides us with a few additional affordances:

1 (Neighborhoods of ideas) 1.1 combinatorial creativity Neighborhoods of ideas can help to fuel combinatorial creativity and forge new connections as well as insight over time. 1.2 writing One might take advantage of these growing neighborhoods to create new things. Perhaps you've been working for a while and you see you have a large number of cards in a particular area. You can, to some extent, put your hand into your box and grab a tranche of notes. By force of filing, these notes are going to be reasonably related, which means you should be able to use them to write a blog post, an article, a magazine piece, a chapter, or even an entire book (which may require a few fistfuls, as necessary.)

2 (Sparse indexing) We don't need to index each and every single topic or concept into our index. Because we've filed things nearby, if a new card about Finsler geometry relates to another and we've already indexed the first under that topic, then we don't need to index the second, because our future selves can easily rely on the fact that if we're interested in Finsler geometry in the future, we can look that up in the index, and go to that number where we're likely to see other cards related to the topic as well as additional serendipitous ideas related to them in that same neighborhood.

You may have heard that as Luhmann progressed on his decades long project, broadly on society and within the area of sociology, he managed to amass 90,000 index cards. How many do you suppose he indexed under the topic of sociology? Certainly he had 10s of thousands relating to his favorite subject, no? Of course he did, but what would happen over time as a collection grows? Having 20,000 indexed entries about sociology doesn't scale well for your search needs. Even 10 indexed entries may be a bit overwhelming as once you find a top level card, hundreds to thousands around it are going to be related. 10 x 100 = 1,000 cards to flip through. So if you're indexing, be conservative. In the roughly 45 years of creating 90,000 slips, Luhmann only indexed two cards with the topic of "sociology". If you look through his index, you'll find that most of his topical entries only have pointers to one or two cards, which provide an entryway into those topics which are backed up with dozens to hundreds of cards on related topics. In rarer, instances you might find three or four, but it's incredibly rare to find more than that.

Over time, one will find that, for the topics one is most interested in, the number of ideas and cards will grown without bound. Here it makes sense to use more and more specific topics (tags, categories, taxonomies) all of which are each also sparsely indexed. Ultimately one finds that in the limit, the categories get so fractionalized that the closest category one idea has with another is the fact that they're juxtaposed closely by number. The of the decimal expansion might say something about the depth or breadth of the relationship between ideas.

Something else arises here. At first one may have the tendency to associate their numbers with topical categories. This is only natural as it's a function at which humans all excel. But are those numbers really categories after a few weeks? Probably not. Treat them only as address numbers or GPS coordinates to be able to find your way. Your sociology section may quickly find itself with invasive species of ideas from anthropology and archaeology as well as history. If you treat all your ideas only at the topical level, they'll be miles away from where you need them to be as the smallest level atomic ideas collide with each other to generate new ideas for you. Naturally you can place them further away if you wish and attempt to bridge the distance with links to numbers in other locations, but I suspect you'll find this becomes pretty tedious over time and antithetical when it comes time to pull out a handful and write something. It's fantastically easier to pull out a several dozen and begin than it is to go through and need to pull out linked cards in a onesy-twosies manner or double check with your index to make sure you've gotten the most interesting bits. This becomes even more important as your collection scales.

https://forum.zettelkasten.de/discussion/2809/brainstorming-the-benefits-of-the-zettelkasten-and-the-zettelkasten-method#latest

Watching this thread for ideas.

Doto, Bob. “What Do We Mean When We Say ‘Bottom-Up?’” Writing by Bob Doto (blog), January 25, 2024. https://writing.bobdoto.computer/what-do-we-mean-when-we-say-bottom-up/.

https://web.archive.org/web/20240125111157/https://boffosocko.com/2024/01/24/rev-dr-martin-luther-king-jr-s-zettelkasten/

Chris keeps surfacing nice examples of people using index card systems for pkm and learning. Here Martin Luther King jr.

The key question here is: what the Zettelkasten really is?

There is argument about something which is not provided: definition of ZK.

When it will be the definition, then it can be argued, but so there are only two one-sided heads talking to themselves about different things, but which have something in common, so they can talk endlessly.

And it has nothing to do with knowledge management, note-taking or learning, because it can be done in many ways, so then there is no need to discuss about it in terms of misunderstanding.

Misunderstanding and fallacies can be talked in terms of definitions or ideas, but it should be any will to compromise some limitations and not putting everything under umbrella-terms.

Will someone discuss that bloggers write texts like ancient philosophers so for example Plato was very first blogger? There are texts and written thoughts in both cases, aren't they!?

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.

reply to Karen Hume at https://jillianhess.substack.com/p/martin-luther-king-jrs-organizational/comment/47959537

It is incredibly unlikely that King was aware of Luhmann's organizational structure as their practices were contemporaneous right down to their starting years. Luhmann's ZK1 comprises 7 sections with about 23,000 notes written from about 1952 to 1961 while the Morehouse Collection indicates that concerning King's research notes archive "The bulk of the notes were taken as reference material for King’s coursework while a doctoral student at Boston University (1952-1955), including notes taken specifically as reference material for King’s dissertation..." I've been actively searching for several years now, and have yet to find anyone following Luhmann's structure until after the Marbach Exhibition "Zettelkästen. Machines of Fantasy" in 2013. Broadly most have historically followed a variation of a subject heading organization, with or without indexing, similar to that found in the commonplace book tradition and described in Johannes Erich Heyde's book Technik des wissenschaftlichen Arbeitens; eine Anleitung, besonders für Studierende (multiple editions including 1931 & 1951), which was a work Luhmann read when devising his own system.

Incidentally it looks like MLK was using Weis No. 35 boxes, a version of which is still available, now from Globe-Weis: https://amzn.to/3vVcO3c. Perhaps some enterprising teachers will help students create their own versions now?

https://findingaids.auctr.edu/repositories/2/resources/159/collection_organization

Morehouse College Martin Luther King, Jr. Collection: Series 4: Research Notes<br /> Collection Identifier: 0000-0000-0000-0131i

This seems to be the bulk of where MLK's zettelkasten is maintained, in particular: - The General Subject file: https://findingaids.auctr.edu/repositories/2/archival_objects/176973 - The Theologian's Debate Box https://findingaids.auctr.edu/repositories/2/archival_objects/176974 - The Subject Index File: https://findingaids.auctr.edu/repositories/2/archival_objects/176975 - The Author Index File: https://findingaids.auctr.edu/repositories/2/archival_objects/176976

https://morehouse.edu/life/campus/martin-luther-king-jr-collection/overview/

Pictured here are three card index files, one specifically labeled as "Subject Index File" and visibly labeled on the back wall as a "Weiss No. 35". One of the individual tabs in the rear of the subject index file behind the A-Z tabs is labeled "Salvation".

Morehouse College Martin Luther King, Jr. Collection: Series 4: Research Notes Collection Identifier: 0000-0000-0000-0131i

https://findingaids.auctr.edu/repositories/2/resources/159

Hess, Jillian. “Martin Luther King Jr.’s Organizational Systems.” Substack newsletter. Noted (blog), January 22, 2024. https://jillianhess.substack.com/p/martin-luther-king-jrs-organizational.

In addition to his card index, Martin Luther King, Jr. compiled a collection of 166 folders organized around various topics which he used to organize outlines, clippings, pages from books, and other source materials as well as drafts of sermons or speeches on those topics.

To some extent these folders are just larger format repositories mirroring the topical arrangements of his card index.

Jillian Hess' guess for the origin of King's plagiarism.

It's also possible that he came from a much more oral facing cultural upbringing rather than a dyed-in-the-wool academic one which focused on attribution.

example of a note from King's zettelkasten

Some of King's note cards later figured in his speeches including his "I Have a Dream" speech.

Martin Luther King, Jr. maintained a card index during his Ph.D. studies while he was at Boston University working in the area of systematic theology.

He created over a thousand notecards with respect to the Old Testament, many containing a mixture of biblical quotations as well as his own thoughts.

Nice to see that Bob Doto has joined the list of moderators at r/zettelkasten.

I Screwed Up but I Learned A Lot About the Zettelkasten<br /> by Curly Gruene Cahall<br /> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XFxZTq8oZhI

Without seeming to realize the split between the two ideas, Cahall seems to have organically discovered the basic difference between a topically oriented commonplace book method (on index cards) and a Luhmann-artig method of numbering cards as folgezettel.

He recommends picking one or the other, or potentially doing both and not worrying.

It would seem like a zettelkasten joke, but Cahall has an index entry on "singular focus", yet it has two entries in disparate places in his zk. [14:02]

🤣

Cahall has a practice of using Luhmann-artig numbering, but having tabbed cards which section his box into broad categories. Yet in an example relating to the Eisenhower Matrix, which he would naturally categorize as "productivity", he instead places it next to a card in "creativity" about dealing with tasks.

Generally I would advise people specifically not to practice this way, but presumably it works for him....

He says he never understood branching and as a result of his practice, he needs to spend much more time indexing.

Curly Gurene Cahall calls his zettelkasten "Sherlock".

Reply to Couscous at https://discord.com/channels/686053708261228577/722584061087842365/1197392837952684052

A quick survey of currently active academics, teachers, and researchers who are blogging about note taking practices and zettelkasten-based methods.

Individuals

Dan Allosso is a history professor at Bemidji State University who has used Obsidian in his courses in the past. He frequently writes about related topics on his Substack channels. One can also find related videos about reading, writing, and research process as well as zettelkasten on his YouTube channel. In addition to this, Dan has a book on note taking and writing which focuses on using a card index or zettelkasten centric process.

Shawn Graham has both a blog as well as a prior course on the history of the internet using Obsidian. In the course materials he has compiled significant details and suggestions for setting up an Obsidian vault for students interested in using the tool.

Kathleen Fitzpatrick has a significant blog which covers a variety of topics centered around her work and research. Her current course Peculiar Genres of Academic Writing (2024) focuses on writing, note taking (including Zettelkasten) and encourages students to try out Obsidian, which she's been using herself. A syllabus for an earlier version of the course includes some big name bloggers in academia whose sites might serve as examples of academic writing in the public. The syllabus also includes a section on being an academic blogger and creating platform as a public intellectual.

Morganeua is a Ph.D. candidate who has a fairly popular YouTube channel on note taking within the academic setting (broadly using Obsidian, though she does touch on other tools from time to time).

Chris Aldrich is independent research who does work at the intersection of intellectual history and note taking methods and practices. He's got an active website along with a large collection of note taking, zettelkasten, commonplace books, and sense-making related articles. His practice is a hybrid one using both analog and digital methods including Obsidian and Hypothes.is.

Bob Doto is a teacher and independent researcher who focuses on Luhmann-artig zettelkasten practice and writing. He uses Obsidian and also operates a private Discord server focused on general Zettelkasten practice.

Manfred Kuehn, a professor of philosophy at Boston University, had an influential blog on note taking practices and culture from 2007 to 2018 on Blogspot. While he's taken the site down, the majority of his work there can be found on the Internet Archive.

Andy Matuschak is an independent researcher who is working at the intersection of learning, knowledge management, reading and related topics. He's got a Patreon, YouTube Channel and a public wiki.

Broader community-based efforts

Here are some tool-specific as well as tool-agnostic web-based fora, chat rooms, etc. which are focused on academic-related note taking and will have a variety of people to follow and interact with.

Obsidian runs a large and diverse Discord server. In addition to many others, they have channels for #Academia and #Academic-tools as well as #Knowledge-management and #zettelkasten.

Tinderbox hosts regular meetups (see their forum for details on upcoming events and how to join). While their events are often product-focused (ways to use it, Q&A, etc.), frequently they've got invited speakers who talk about their work, processes, and methods of working. Past recorded sessions can be found on YouTube. While this is tool-specific, much of what is discussed in their meetups can broadly be applied to any tool set. Because Tinderbox has been around since the early 00s and heavily focused on academic use, the majority of participants in the community are highly tech literate academics whose age skews to the over 40 set.

A variety of Zettelkasten practitioners including several current and retired academicians using a variety of platforms can be found at https://forum.zettelkasten.de/.

Boris Mann and others held Tools for Thought meetups which had been regularly held through 2023. They may have some interesting archived material for perusal on both theory, practice, and a wide variety of tools.

Others?

I've tried to quickly tip out my own zettelkasten on this topic with a focus on larger repositories of active publicly available web-based material. Surely there is a much wider variety of people and resources not listed here, but it should be a reasonable primer for beginners. Feel free to reply with additional suggestions and resources of which you may be aware.

Software and applications for creating visualizations of zettelkasten contents: - Tinderbox (Mac) - Apple's Freeform (app) - Obsidian Canvas - Excalidraw (plugin for Obsidian) - Scrintal - Heptabase - Card Buddy (Mac) - AFFiNE (https://github.com/toeverything/AFFiNE)

https://forum.zettelkasten.de/discussion/2797/an-app-to-represent-a-zettelkasten-or-parts-of-it-visually

Choosing an external system for knowledge keeping and production forces the learner into a deliberate practice and confronts them with their lack of understanding. This is a large part of the underlying value not only of the zettelkasten, but of the use of a commonplace book which Benjamin Franklin was getting at when recommending that one "read with a pen in your hand". The external system also creates a modality shift from reading to writing by way of thinking which further underlines the value.

What other building blocks are present in addition to: - modality shift - deliberate practice - confrontation of lack of understanding

Are there other systems that do all of these as well as others simultaneously?

link to Franklin quote: https://hypothes.is/a/HZeDKI3YEeyj9GcNWKX4iA

Hawk Sugano was introduced to index cards circa 2001 by means of Watanabe Shoichi's book “知的生活の方法” (A Method of Intellectual Life".

https://web.archive.org/web/20170530033313/http://pileofindexcards.org/blog/2006/08/20/me-and-indexcard/

https://web.archive.org/web/20180227130424/http://pileofindexcards.org/blog/2006/12/25/start-indexcard-provider-service/

Hawk Sugano apparently offered the Pile of Index Cards as a physical product offering by combining Correct's index card dock and Kokuyo's fieldnotes in late December 2006.

https://forum.zettelkasten.de/discussion/1120/a-notebook-zettelkasten/p1

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

At least Scott Scheper is advising people to ignore the advice in his own book about numbering systems. (Too bad he didn't write that advice in his own book...)

https://www.reddit.com/r/antinet/comments/193c6bu/comment/khcbe5n/

https://www.etsy.com/shop/RelicWoodGifts

Etsy shop that does custom wooden boxes: Relic Wood Gifts<br /> Could be commissioned to do custom zettelkasten boxes.

I've seen an example of their work and it is stunningly nice.

via Librarian at Jefferson Branch of Pasadena Public library

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.

CrossLine<br /> https://github.com/rochus-keller/CrossLine

ᔥSukhovskii in CrossLine who asks if anyone has used it for a ZK before

reply to oxytonic on 2023-01-08 at https://hypothes.is/a/8QdgetQOEe2XG6u5i9iAHQ

In my experience, alternating alphanumeric codes give you the "gist" of the original context. Purely with reference to my rough outline, my notecard "3516/b" implies psychology (3XXX), cognition (35XX), and memory (351X). Even the single slash implies a level of abstraction and/or specificity.

But it's not enough because it runs the risk of locking you in. Forward links on the card (or forward links to the card!) offer comparable if not competitive recontextualization, which is most likely what Luhmann means by "multiple storage".

Caution: My note here has some significant missing context which results from significant additional research.

The primary issue with analog slip boxes, particularly in academic research of Luhmann's day, was one of multiple storage. No one else I'm aware of prior to his time used Luhmann's filing scheme (and very few after until about 2013). Instead most filed multiple copies of their notes under category headings like "psychology", "cognition", and "memory" (to use your example) so that those ideas would be readily available when they came to work on their ideas relating to cognition, for example. This involved a tremendous amount of copying work. (For reference, see Heyde, Johannes Erich. Technik des wissenschaftlichen Arbeitens: zeitgemässe Mittel und Verfahrungsweisen. Junker und Dünnhaupt, 1931. which is the handbook which Luhmann used to scaffold his method.) It was this copying and filing under multiple categories which was commonly referred to as multiple storage. Many academics got around it by hiring assistants or secretaries who would do this duplicative work and filing on their behalf; Luhmann didn't have this additional help and it may have been a portion of the pressure for the evolution of his method.

Instead Luhmann used branching and cross-indexing his ideas along with regular use and familiarity of the space within his boxes. While his zettelkasten may seem on the surface to be done by category, the way you suggest, it definitely is not. Some of this appearance is suggested by editorial decisions made by the curators of his digital archive and, in larger part, by Scott Scheper who (sadly in my opinion) recommends using the Academic Outline of Disciplines as top level categories a practice which heavily belies some of what Luhmann was doing. While Luhmann was inspired by the Dewey Decimal System, he wasn't using the parts of it that equated numbers with topics, in part because he didn't need to and it would have been counterproductive to his ultimate method—specifically causing him to deal with multiple storage. Modern (digital) database theory and practice allows some note takers an easier way around this problem.

For more on this see: - https://boffosocko.com/2022/10/27/thoughts-on-zettelkasten-numbering-systems/ - https://boffosocko.com/2023/01/19/on-the-interdisciplinarity-of-zettelkasten-card-numbering-topical-headings-and-indices/

다시 확인하고 아이디어 고민

@Nori said: First, if you instead of an alphanumeric ID use a timestamp-based one, there is no need to “place” the note anywhere.

Too often I see this generic advice to use a timestamp ID, but no one ever mentions what affordance that practice provides or any direct motivation for doing it. In this context it's suggested to remove the need to place the note anywhere, but if this is the only benefit, why bother having an ID at all? What other tangible benefits does a timestamp ID provide? (If the only benefit is having a record of creation, then why bother to put it into the title, which usually only causes confusion and problem in most digital systems? Digital systems have much better places to store date/time created, modified, etc. if you need them for search.)

In Luhmann's case the alphanumeric ID gave direct benefits in organically creating neighborhoods of ideas in which one could easily travel and which provided concrete, findable locations for search and linking. This appears to be part of the beneficial structure for what @IvanFerrero has, so why suggest such a change @Nori?

reply to u/sscheper at https://www.reddit.com/r/Zettelkasten/comments/18u39ca/comment/kfi3nl4/?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=web2x&context=3

It's not a Luhmann Zettelkasten if ~~it's digital~~ Luhmann didn't make it. 🗃️

There, I've fixed it for ya...

FireKing File Cabinet, 1-Hour Fire Protection, 6-Drawer, Small Document Size, 31" Deep<br /> https://www.filing.com/FireKing-Card-Check-Note-Cabinet-6-Drawer-p/6-2552-c.htm

A modern index card catalog filing solution with locks and fireproofing offered by FireKing for $6,218.00 with shipment in 2-4 weeks. 6 Drawers with three sections each. Weighs 860 lbs.

at 0.0072" per average card, with filing space of 25 15/16" per section with 18 sections, this should hold 64,843 index cards.

I appreciate that he takes a moment to acknowledge that this step of assigning numbers and arranging is work. Many gloss over this.

The work put in up front ideally pays off later.

https://leanpub.com/analogbrain/c/I9hqZbLpOxa9

via https://www.reddit.com/r/antinet/comments/18ufpsr/booklet_about_analog_zk/ from u/Natural_Grocery4786 aka Juan M. Ferrera

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. 😜🃏🗃️

https://web.archive.org/web/20060422014759/http://that4.2ch.net/test/read.cgi/stationery/1021438965/l50

Apparently there is a Japanese text with the title "How to Write and American-style Essay" which recommends using classification codes in the upper right and an assigned serial number in the top left.

How was this related (or not) to Luhmann's practice or to the practices of the Dewey Decimal System? [Update: not related at all, see: https://hypothes.is/a/bDEoiqT3Ee6lAeNajBBsjw]

RE the numbering mention ed at https://hypothes.is/a/pp5DdqTpEe6FVQNRzkBV2w

Write Papers seems to be roughly the same book as アメリカ式論文の書き方 both of which are written by Ron White. Thus the numbering advice now seems more clear. (see: https://hypothes.is/a/bDEoiqT3Ee6lAeNajBBsjw)

Ron White recommends taking notes on 3 x 5 inch index cards. One should place the Dewey Decimal or Library of Congress catalog number in the upper left of their bibliography card and in the upper right corner one should number their cards consecutively (1, 2, 3, etc.). White indicates the importance of these numbers is primarily that they are unique, presumably so one can refer to them or reorder them if they are put out of order. (p46-7)

These are more similar to zettelkasten and commonplacing traditions. They comprise the majority of the system.

<small><cite class='h-cite via'>ᔥ <span class='p-author h-card'>Manfred Kuehn</span> in Taking note: Luhmann's Zettelkasten (<time class='dt-published'>08/06/2021 00:16:23</time>)</cite></small>

Note the use of the edge highlighted taxonomy system used on these cards:

Similar to the so called high five indexing system I ran across recently.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/hawkexpress/albums/72157594200490122/

http://www.schach-udo.de/dab/zwei.htm

https://www.chess.com/forum/view/chesstv/amanpour-interview-whats-on-young-judit-polgars-index-cards

Spangenthal, Paige, and Christiane Amanpour. “Two Chess Grandmasters Weigh in on ‘The Queen’s Gambit.’” Amanpour & Company (blog), November 7, 2020. https://www.pbs.org/wnet/amanpour-and-company/video/two-chess-grandmasters-weigh-in-on-the-queens-gambit/.

Flora, Carla. “The Grandmaster Experiment: How Did One Family Produce Three of the Most Successful Female Chess Champions Ever?” Psychology Today, July 1, 2005. https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/articles/200507/the-grandmaster-experiment.

copy also at: https://chessdailynews.com/the-grandmaster-experiment/

https://twitter.com/bstephen2/status/1290560814596984835

https://twitter.com/bstephen2/status/1290561271235055616

https://twitter.com/bstephen2/status/1290561993095741445

https://twitter.com/bstephen2/status/1290926377148076033

https://twitter.com/bstephen2/status/1290562798616031235

Kasparyan's zettelkasten consists of 24 wooden boxes and at least two plastic trays of cards. The trays are numbered and the highest numbered tray has the number 34 on it.

In the picture are two plastic trays, but it's not obvious how big they are or how many cards they may contain.

Approximating that these would contain about 1,200 cards each, the collection is likely between 28,800 and 40,800 cards.

✅ https://t.co/5nGvHBm5Vo<br>Today I made a video about Henrik Kasparian's chess puzzle database which includes 30 thousand chess puzzles! In the precomputer era Kasparian used index cards to select everything in one place, and it took him decades to complete!#chess #chesspuzzle pic.twitter.com/V1H2PMKfjN

— Suren (@surenaghabek) August 3, 2020

via ARVES Chess Endgamestudy Association at https://arves.org/arves/index.php/en/endgamestudies/studies-by-composer/90-genrikh-kasparyan

Presumably Genrikh Kasparyan used his card index of chess puzzles as material to write one of his many books including: - Domination in 2,545 Endgame Studies by Genrikh Kasparyan. ISBN 0-923891-87-0 - 888 Miniature Studies by Genrikh Moiseyevich Kasparian. ISBN 978-86-7686-147-7

As a chess champion, he surely used to to fuel his chess studies and chess career.

It Took Decades To Create This Chess Puzzle Database (30 Thousand), 2020. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y9craX0M_2A.

A chess School named after Genrikh Kasparyan (alternately Henrik Kasparian) houses his card index of chess puzzles with over 30,000 cards.

The cards are stored in stacked wooden trays in a two door cabinet with 4 shelves.

There are at least 23 small wooden trays of cards pictured in the video, though there are possibly many more. (Possibly as many as about 35 based on the layout of the cabinet and those easily visible.)

Kasparyan's son Sergei donated the card index to the chess school.

Each index card in the collection, filed in portrait orientation, begins with the name of the puzzle composer, lists its first publication, has a chess board diagram with the pieces arranges, and beneath that the solution of the puzzle. The cards are arranged alphabetically by the name of the puzzle composer.

The individual puzzle diagrams appear to have been done with a stamp of the board done in light blue ink with darker blue (or purple?) and red inked stamped pieces arranged on top of it.

ᔥu/ManuelRodriguez331 in r/Zettelkasten - Chess players are memorizing games with index cards

This is quite similar to the advice by Sonke Ehrens and Nikolas Luhmann.

With rough German to English translation here:

Zettelkasten as the second brain of Niklas Luhmann

<small><cite class='h-cite via'>ᔥ <span class='p-author h-card'>Roy Scholten</span> in "@ChrisAldrich For a somewhat in depth look at Luhmann's zettelkasten , I made a rough translation of this talk: https://t.co/ik7VTOGMV8 here: https://t.co/nAAb7aXXtC" / Twitter (<time class='dt-published'>11/01/2021 11:39:57</time>)</cite></small>

Watched 2021-11-01

https://www.amazon.com/JUNDUN-Dividers-Collapsible-Fireproof-4x6-Inch/dp/B0BNHZ3JTR/?th=1

A card index box which is waterproof and fireproof for potential travel.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Zettelkasten/comments/18i45tm/with_me_being_an_analog_zk_user_im_curious_where/

Lots of analog vs digital angst here. Some of it stirred up by Scheper and his religion.

reply to u/Apprehensive_Net5630 at https://www.reddit.com/r/Zettelkasten/comments/18kpv0y/comment/kdymaeq/

Some of the alternatives look pricey, but often can be negotiated down or found at more reasonable rates if you look around for a bit. I've got some advice and ideas at: https://boffosocko.com/research/zettelkasten-commonplace-books-and-note-taking-collection/#Boxes

As an example, I picked up a 20 drawer 3x5" oak card index this year for $250 making it cheaper per drawer (and with more linear space per drawer) than a brand new cardboard box version. Incidentally, even buying index cards in bulk to lower cost, it'll run me more than twice what I paid for the entire card catalog to fill it with index cards (\~$550).

Directly comparing the storage space, I'd need almost 13 Vaultz 2-drawer boxes at about $75 each or $980 to equal it. I could have bought my Gaylord card index and filled it with cards and still saved money over buying a set of just the Vaultz boxes.

Having the beautiful and useful piece of furniture in the mix definitely makes the process a lot more fun and enjoyable too.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bmyVf_LhF50

Nothing new or interesting here. Watched at 2x.

Sad revelation is that Scott Scheper has indoctrinated Nico to the point that he's making videos for Scheper's channel rather than for himself. I hope Nico is getting something valuable (ie, monetary payment) for this.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/15gI7LozljTOvo_7oUwfnOIwfzD8O0VHVgWGr0oK3RI0/edit

When comparing, one ought to take careful account of the variety of wikis and their uses (both public and private) and not fall into the availability heuristic of thinking that all wikis are used and managed like Wikipedia solely because it is one of the biggest and most popular ones.

Some individual users slowly build their personal wikis a note at a time, but instead of linking one note to another, they place it onto a page near related ideas, which may tend to create articles over time. (Sounds a bit like folgezettel, no?) See Ward Cunningham’s (the creator of the idea of wiki) wiki for this: https://wiki.c2.com/

Many public TiddlyWiki’s, in part because of design, are created as short note/card-based ideas which may slowly accumulate from notes to articles as well. See my own example: https://tw.boffosocko.com/

It may take some digging in to find public versions, but many FedWiki sites have a very note (or card-based) root design rather than an article-based design: http://fed.wiki.org/view/federated-wiki

Bill Seitz’s public wiki is broadly a melange of all these patterns as well: http://webseitz.fluxent.com/wiki/BillSeitz

For additional contrast and comparison, see also: - https://indieweb.org/Zettelk%C3%A4sten - https://indieweb.org/digital_garden - https://indieweb.org/commonplace_book

Looking at a variety of specific examples in practice will tend to be far more fruitful than considering a tiny handful of theoretical (and potentially non-existent) examples, particularly in light of the massive bias which is created by the existence of Wikipedia.

reply to u/chiefkeif at https://www.reddit.com/r/Zettelkasten/comments/18fjaya/new_member_here_is_zettelkasten_the_right_method/

Some of your root issues may be addressed directly by engaging with by spaced repetition systems (for improving memory recall: try Anki, Mnemosyne, et al.) as well as mnemonic systems (memory palaces, the major system, etc.). Given that a Zettelkasten can be an instantiation of both of these simultaneously, you may find benefits for using it in such a setting. This being said, you may be better off with either one or both of the more proximal solutions with a zettelkasten being somewhat more distal for your specific needs.

The Notebook by Roland Allen review – notes on living by [[Sukhdev Sandhu]]

Not so much of a review as the dumping out of most of the reviewer's highlights from the book. I get the impression that he at least read it and paid attention, but what did he actually think of it?

https://forum.zettelkasten.de/discussion/1894/the-official-luhmann-certified-100-note-categories

Cevolini, Alberto. “Die Erfindung des Zettelkastens als Vergessensmaschine: Eine historische und wissenssoziologische Einführung.” Polarisierte Welten. Verhandlungen des 41. Kongresses der Deutschen Gesellschaft für Soziologie in Bielefeld 2022 41 (September 29, 2023). https://publikationen.soziologie.de/index.php/kongressband_2022/article/view/1564.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CAerQtNkGT0

Short video version

Collection of Bob Doto's notes on tree structures with respect to N. Luhmann's zettelkasten

(via https://www.reddit.com/r/Zettelkasten/comments/188das5/comment/kbni2ft/?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=web2x&context=3)

He's at least done enough research to know the general groups of people who are already broadly using the zettelkasten method (or some other area of PKM).

https://www.atomicworkflows.com/atomic-note-taking/

A new zettelkasten book, though oddly no physical copy and no ebook version? The fact that this is bundled with a course and seems priced on the high side seems a major turn off.

https://docs.zettlr.com/en/advanced/zkn-method/

Zettlr's maintainer's experience suggests that using complex zettelkasten IDs makes one less likely to assume something about what they mean and thereby making them better suited for cross-linking notes.

Part of this can be read as a means of disassociating the idea of specific topics from the notes on the cards.

Zettlr uses a date-time stamp as their zettelkasten default. It doesn't suggest any useful or worthwhile reason why.

瓦基的相反立場 opposite stance to Waji's.

https://blog.getreu.net/20230904-tp-note-news11

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. 🗃️

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.

The simplest and most direct way of bringing home to the reader the truth of this dogmatic assertion of the scientific value of note-taking in sociological investigation...

Beatrice Webb indicates that it is an incontrovertible truth that sociologists should use a card index (zettelkasten) as a primary tool in their research.

We ought to closely notice that she wrote this truism about the field of sociology in a book published in 1926, the year prior to Niklas Luhmann's <s>death</s> birth.

How popular was her book with respect to the remainder of the field of sociology subsequently? What other sociology texts may have had similar ideas? Webb obviously quotes some of this technique in the late 1800s as being popular within the area of history. How evenly was it spread across the humanities in general?

Is Beatrice Webb's card index amongst her papers? Where might they be stored today?

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/.

reply to u/atomicnotes at https://www.reddit.com/r/Zettelkasten/comments/1843k2w/comment/kaypbk2/?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=web2x&context=3

I'm reasonably certain that most of the transmission of the traditions was specifically from person to person rather than from text to person. Yours is an interesting and important (and rare oral) example of person to person zettelkasten transmission, of which I've been collecting some scant examples. (Other examples appreciated, inquire within.)

Interestingly a lot of this transmission is still happening every day (though now more "visibly" online) in fora like Reddit, zettelkasten.de, Discord, in social media, and even smaller group courses. As Annie Murphy Paul indicates in The Extended Mind, people like to imitate rather than innovate. Perhaps Luhmann, being on his own outside of the establishment, was more likely to innovate because he was on his own and took Heyde's advice, but evolved it to his needs rather than asking questions on Reddit?

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.

HA! Apparently my work has been influential for someone. I love that he put it up top like this. 😂

via https://zibaldone.substack.com/p/a-guide-to-zettelkasten-part-2-a

https://zibaldone.substack.com/p/a-guide-to-zettelkasten-part-2-a

I showed up expecting a one pager on zettelkasten method and was surprised to find it was about reading. :)