Why not this?: Idea -> Note-taking -> (Filter) -> Anki

How to optimise for: * Time * Memory

And what are the opportunity costs?

The same happens when you make atomic notes in Roam or Obsidian, where you can link things. Non-linear note-taking

in ¶90-96 he provides some advice about selection and discrimination of reading sources and materials for indexing as a means of cutting down on the information overload problem

Some of his factors include: - relying on experience in a field/area to narrow down - limiting one's scope of activity - staying away from reference books (dictionaries, encyclopedias - discriminate in favor of the specific versus the general - don't admit duplicative literature (unless one is working syntopically—though he doesn't admit this caveat), and prefer the most authoritative sources - prefer authoritative authors, when given, but make space for new writers who may be more careful in their writing and argumentation - discriminate by style and composition and in particular stay away from pernicious advertising-related material (today he might advocate away from listicles, content farms, etc.)

While Kaiser's definition of literature presumes letters and writing, his use of it doesn't narrow it down to require literacy, it speaks only of observations and language.

Similarly his use of "records" doesn't need to only to require writing.

As such, the description here of recording information, while applicable to literate cultures, leaves plenty of room for oral cultures who use similar systems to do the same thing.

Songlines and related mnemonics are certainly means of indexing information.

Here Kaiser touches on the broader themes inherent in the concepts of atomic notes, which might be used to build up new and interesting structures. He doesn't specify the "size of a note" nor does he say that one will "know it when they see it", but he's suggesting something very close to it.

Rather than define the appropriate size, a feat which is difficult to do at best, he's providing a very narrow set of benefits for encouraging one to cut things down to size as they index them: small pieces are easier to use to build new things.

Kaiser's idea of classification work bears close similarity to Mortimer Adler/Charles Van Doren's concept of coming to terms. There are subtle shades between ideas which must be differentiated so as to better situate them with respect to others.

Kaiser's argument for why building a personal index of notes is more valuable than relying on the indexes of others.

Note that this is answer still stands firmly even after the advent of both the Mundaneum, Google, and other digital search methods (not to mention his statement about ignoring advertising, which obviously had irksome aspects even in 1911.) Our needs and desires are idiosyncratic, so our personal indexes are going to be imminently more valuable to us over time because of these idiosyncrasies. Sure, you could just Google it, but Google answers stand alone and don't build you toward insight without the added work of creating your own index.

Some of this is bound up in the idea that your own personal notes are far more valuable than the notes someone else may have taken and passed along to you.

Only personal experience in your note taking practice will guide you on what is most valuable for excerpting. After time you will come to know and understand what is worth spending your time on and what isn't. You will not learn this from others experience, only your own, and this is why we call it practice.

When were bookmark-like "flags" introduced in America? (Certainly prior to 1908, based on this reference.)

anecdotal evidence from Ironmonger (1908) that this is the first card index book and prior versions are only of shorter booklet-like forms.

(Naturally, I don't trust this in the fullest sense.)

Kaiser, J. Systematic Indexing. The Card System Series 2. London: Sir Isaac Pitman & Sons, Ltd., 1911. http://archive.org/details/systematicindexi00kaisuoft.

Annotation URL: urn:x-pdf:2acc267d4cbe455af640e4a707a84692

Alternate: https://jonudell.info/h/facet/?user=chrisaldrich&max=100&exactTagSearch=true&expanded=true&url=urn%3Ax-pdf%3A2acc267d4cbe455af640e4a707a84692

See alternate version at: # or https://www.google.com/books/edition/Systematic_Indexing/iwFDAAAAIAAJ?hl=en Google-Books-ID: iwFDAAAAIAAJ

(Switched for better OCR)

Example of someone using hair ties and smaller internal boxes to prevent zettelkasten cards from being dumped out due to child mischief.

via: https://www.reddit.com/r/antinet/comments/1bv6sxy/moving_again_and_a_tip_on_transporting/

read Tupac's Revolutionary Notes by [[Jillian Hess]]

Brief overview of some of Shakur's notebooks and lyrics with a mini-biography.

https://fromm-online.org/mediathek-und-download/exzerpte-sammlung-erich-fromms/<br /> Exzerpte Sammlung Erich Fromms

Excerpts as .pdf: https://fromm-online.org/wp-content/uploads/lists/4.04%20Excerpts%20collection%20of%20Erich%20Fromm.pdf

While Kaiser recommends against the need to re-arrange physical cards from one drawer to another, which creates the need to refamiliarize oneself with their new locations, the same idea applies to switching from one digital note taking application to another as a similar switch of user interface functionality may cause additional overhead and stress thereby preventing quick use of the system itself.

Placing call numbers or location numbers on items to be filed allows them to be separated from other items while placing cross-references or links allows them to be brought back together again. These two affordances allow for divergence as well as convergence of items or ideas.

Kaiser might be surprised at the overuse and confusing nature of terminology in the modern note taking space now. Somehow the terminology still suffers from lack of consistent and fixed terminology.

Devising Card Systems

Many modern-day note takers and knowledge workers might take solace in the broad advice provided by J. Kaiser in 1908. In describing some of the broad categories of uses of card index filing systems for business use he says that each entity "has its individual character and individual requirements, and its individual character" (ie, everyone is different and has different needs), therefore everyone "must devise [their] system in accordance with [their] own requirements" and should "be the best judge as to what these requirements are." He continues on in the rest of the book to outline a variety of suggestions and methods which one might use or adopt, but he doesn't dictate specific methods and leaves those decisions up to the end user.

When devising their own systems, one certainly ought to heed this advice when looking at a variety of alternative methods like Forte's P.A.R.A., Milo's LYT, or even in mimicking Luhmann's idiosyncratic Zettelkasten set up. Are these methods best for your particular use cases? Are they simple enough for what you want to do, or are they overly structured and complicated? The key is to be able to classify and file things quickly so that they can be easily accessed in the future, all the rest becomes additional details and overhead to support on an ongoing basis.

(¶76)

02:18Timothée Chalamet read and annotated Dune heavily before first interview with Denis Villeneuve

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.

Hookmark https://hookproductivity.com/

suggested by u/japdlsd at https://www.reddit.com/r/Zettelkasten/comments/1b9wqza/comment/ku8fuv2/?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=web2x&context=3

A.L.W.: HST3 favors white stability, not opaque stability. We apologize for this error slipping through.

https://chat.openai.com/g/g-z5XcnT7cQ-zettel-critique-assistant

Zettel Critique Assistant<br /> By Florian Lengyel<br /> Critique Zettels following three rules: Zettels should have a single focus, WikiLinks indicate a shift in focus, Zettels should be written for your future self. The GPT will suggest how to split multi-focused notes into separate notes. Create structure note from a list of note titles and abstracts.

ᔥ[[ZettelDistraction]] in Share with us what is happening in your ZK this week. February 20, 2024

https://www.reddit.com/r/ObsidianMD/comments/1avz21q/what_to_teach_in_an_obsidian_workshop_at/

watched Tinderbox Meetup 2023-12-03 featuring Jorge Arango

Attendees: Mark Bernstein, Michael Becker, Jorge Arango,

Introductions: Rolf Huber (Information Architect)

Featured

• many different definitions of notes (types...)
• Damien Newman scribble drawing as a representation or diagram of the design process (22:42)
• 2x2 grid matrix of evergreen versus transient and mnemonic versus generative.(27:00)

• contacts, recipes, book highlights and marginalia in the mnemonic/evergreen quadrant; to do lists, grocery list, appointments in the mnemonic/transient quadrant; sticky notes, mind maps, project plans, tinderbox in the generative/transient quadrant; knowledge gardens, zettelkasten, pkm systems in the generative/evergreen;

• What does the structure of containers in each of these spaces look like? How simple or complex are they?

• There can be growth from one space into others, (especially from the mnemonic into generative).

• Chuck Wade mentions that email fits into all four of the quadrants.

• Cathy Marshall used "information gardening" in Xerox Park setting... (source?) It may have been mentioned in Arango's interview of Mark Bernstein on The Informed Life.

Arango came to knowledge gardening via Brian Eno essay on architecture and gardening metaphor.

Three Rules of Knowledge Gardening

1. Make short notes; create enough context to help out your future self
2. Connect your notes
3. Nurture your notes; revisit, build, feedback

Q&A

Dave Rogers - we should challenge our notes rather than "nurturing them";

JA: Perhaps we could use AI/GPT to "steel man" our arguments?

Hookmark: https://hookproductivity.com/

Gordon Brander's Noosphere - protocol to define the problem of linking things quickly at internet scale.

Able to see lots of cards at once.

ZK practice inspired by Ahrens, but had practice based on Umberto Eco's book before that.

Broad subjects for his Ph.D. studies: Ecology in architecture / environmentalism

3 parts: - zk main cards - bibliography / keywords - chronological section (history of ecology)

Four "drawers" and space for blank cards and supplies. Built on wheels to allow movement. Has a foldable cover.

He has analog practice because he worries about companies closing and taking notes with them.

Watched TheNoPoet's How I use my analog Zettelkasten.

It seems somewhat hypocritical from Ted Kaczynski's perspective to vehemently oppose modern technology, just as the pencil undoubtedly brought about literacy, so too would modern technology applied to communication bring further advancement to society.

The huge frozen card catalog of the Library of Congress currently suers from alarming levels of public trauma: like the movie trope in which the private eye tears a page from a phone

Information loss in digitizing catalog cards...

Digitization efforts in card collections may result in the loss or damage of cards or loss of the materials which the original cards represented in the case of library card catalogs.

by u/osservazione at https://www.reddit.com/r/antinet/comments/1anwrez/zauberkasten_work_in_progress/

Adrian was the son of Edward Peacock.

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)

James Murray kept an address book with the names, addresses, and notations about the thousands of people who had volunteered contributions for the Oxford English Dictionary. Also included were the lists of material they read, the level of their contributions in number of slips and dates sent, as well as various personal details including relationships, marriages, and deaths.

https://capacities.io/

https://anagora.org/nuggets

or as Vannevar Bush might have said, everyone will have their own idiosyncratic associative trails...

Not mentioned here is that with a top-down approach, if a card had related topics on it, then it would have to either be copied to those areas separately, or would need to be carefully cross-indexed to those areas to be able to be found again when needed.

When the number of topics, n, begins to exceed 2 the amount of additional work and cards can grow quite a bit, though generally only linearly with respect to n. (Don't discount the work on the back side of searching for and finding these easily at later dates.)

Watched [[Dan Allosso]] on teaching Note-taking at https://vimeo.com/905323967/90544a580f

Solid overview!

https://cudl.lib.cam.ac.uk/collections/newton/1

Some of Newton's other papers are held by The Morgan Library & Museum.

physically writing, memory "geospatial" tactile

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.

https://lu.ma/toolsforthought

original source?

it's Benjamin Franklin letter to Miss Stevenson, Wanstead. Craven-street, May 16, 1760.<br /> see: https://hyp.is/HZeDKI3YEeyj9GcNWKX4iA/www.gutenberg.org/files/40236/40236-h/40236-h.htm

https://peculiargenres.commons.msu.edu/schedule/

reply to JasperMcFly at https://forum.zettelkasten.de/discussion/comment/19282/#Comment_19282

I've been working towards this goal for some time. The idea isn't simply delineating the characteristics of Luhmann's system and its comparison to others, but to discern what the broadest characteristics of all of these systems are and what sorts of affordances those pieces and forms provide as tools for organizing and thinking. This will allow a broader range of people with different needs and different abilities to pick and choose which characteristics and methods might work best for them to reach those particular goals. Too many are approaching zettelkasten with a surface level understanding and somehow hoping that it will magically solve all their problems. When it doesn't, "consequently," as Luhmann would say, "just like in porn movies, they leave disappointed." [ZK II note 9/8.3]

A wonderful book has even been written about the index card technique: Index Cardology, The Handbook of Index Card Technique by Dr. Walter Porstmann.

Looks like there's three editions from 1928 to the 1950s: Porstmann, Walter. Kartei - Kunde: das Handbuch der Karteitechnik. Stuttgart: Verlag für Wirtschaft und Verkehr, 1928. https://search.worldcat.org/formats-editions/58666432?limit=50&offset=1&orderBy=publicationDateAsc

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.

https://publish.obsidian.md/syntopicon/Welcome+to+the+Syntopicon!

Syntopicon Vault by [[Dan Allosso]]

Sounds similar to Umberto Eco's admonition about photocopying: https://hypothes.is/a/U3Sg_r0ZEe25T2tD3U-nmw

Modularized note-taking principles.

One of the benefits of having a separate working bibliography for a project is that it provides a back up copy in the case that one loses or misplaces one's original bibliography note cards. (p 50)

White highlights the ability to easily shuffle and reshuffle cards in a variety of orders (alphabetical, by source type) and this is one of the benefits of using note cards. (p51)

Fry, Ron. Write Papers. 2nd ed. Ron Fry’s How to Study Program. Hawthorne, NJ: Career Pr Inc, 1994. https://archive.org/details/writepapers00fryr/page/46/mode/2up

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]

Hawk Sugano's Pile of Index Cards method is laid out visually in his Flickr account using photos of several of his cards along with descriptions of what each is for and how they work.

These include: 0. PoIC Format/Template 1. Record Card 2. Discovery Card 3. GTD Card 4. Cite Card 5. How to link between cards

https://www.flickr.com/photos/hawkexpress/192480328/in/album-72157594200490122/

The PoIC system allows linking of cards using date/timestamps for indexing/finding. Interestingly they were all kept in chronological order rather than in idea order as in Luhmann's zettelkasten.

What are the pros/cons of this?<br /> - more searching and hunting through cards certainly is a drawback for lack of "threaded" ideas - others...

hawkexpress apparently learned this technique on the 2-channel.

(Edited 2022-10-13, 2023-12-27)

https://www.flickr.com/photos/hawkexpress/189972899/in/album-72157594200490122/

Despite being used primarily as a productivity tool the PoIC system also included some features of personal knowledge management with "discovery cards" and "citation cards". Discovery cards were things which contained one's own ideas while the citation cards were the ideas of others and included bibliographic information. Citation cards were tagged on the 5th block as an indicator within the system.

Question: How was the information material managed? Was it separate from the date-based system? On first blush it would appear not, nor was there a subject index which would have made it more difficult for one to find data within the system.

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

MESON is comprised in part of card index collections of chess problems and puzzles.

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

Summary

1. 📚 Second Edition Overview: This is the second, revised and expanded edition of the book. The first edition was titled "Como Fazer Anotações Inteligentes. Uma Técnica Simples para Impulsionar a Escrita, Aprendizado e Pensamento - para Estudantes, Acadêmicos e Escritores de Livros de Não Ficção".

2. 🖋️ Key Focus: The book emphasizes the importance of organizing ideas and notes for effective writing. It's a guide for students, academics, and knowledge professionals to enhance their writing, learning, and long-term knowledge retention.

3. 🧠 Smart Notes Methodology: It introduces the concept of Smart Notes, based on psychological insights and the proven Zettelkasten note-taking technique, offering a comprehensive guide in English for the first time.

4. 🎯 Target Audience: The book is particularly useful for students and academics in social sciences and humanities, non-fiction writers, and anyone engaged in reading, thinking, and writing.

5. ⏳ Time Efficiency: Focuses on saving time spent searching for notes, quotes, or references, allowing more time for thinking, understanding, and developing new ideas in writing.

6. 👤 Author's Background: Written by Dr. Sönke Ahrens, a writer and researcher in education and social sciences, known for the award-winning book "Experimento e Exploração: Formas de Revelação do Mundo" (Springer).

7. 🌍 Global Reach: Since its initial release, "Como Fazer Anotações Inteligentes" has sold over 10,000 copies and has been translated into seven languages.

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.

Emancipator's Safe In the Steep Cliffs (album) {Wikipedia}

site:: [[Wikipedia]] url:: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Safe_In_the_Steep_Cliffs accessed:: 2023-12-17

Marshall Sahlins [Wikipedia, English]

site:: [[Wikipedia]] url:: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marshall_Sahlins accessed:: 2023-12-15

Graad 6-8

embellishments

https://ideaflow.app/

Audio transcription notes with AI

2023-12-12 Released on PruductHunt https://www.producthunt.com/posts/ideaflow

reply to ctietze at https://forum.zettelkasten.de/discussion/comment/15201/#Comment_15201

I can be stupid in my [private] Zettelkasten without anyone noticing.

I too have a private space exactly for this purpose. On the other hand, writing and publishing in public spaces forces me to do some additional thinking/polishing work that I might not otherwise, and that often provides some spectacular results as well as useful feedback for improvement over time.

https://help.obsidian.md/import/evernote

Given the recent state of Evernote and their beginning to charge larger amounts and close off their free tiers, I've moved copies of my data over to Obsidian just in case.

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

A note taking tool discussed by [[Bastien Guerry]] at I Annotate 2021.

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

太好了 linking etween notes, it's time!

How about backlinks? 有反向連結嗎？

Answer: backlinks are shown in a note's property pane (can be hidden). Great! 有！

一放入多：最好是採用連結，以免生出內容稍有出入的多個版本，那就罪大惡極。

後記 Update: I tested it and confirm the note is referred to by link. So, changing the note will update it for all notebooks the note is under. 經我測試，確認是一份筆記內容，多個連結。

iOS 好像沒有這功能：缺憾

I'm a bit surprised at the conclusion: Evernote still the best and can't be supplanted easily. Seriously?

But there are some naked truths about Tana and Mem (and Mem X). The Second Brain guy didn't mince words.

I think he is too harsh on Obsidian. You can't have your cake and eat it. If local-first philosophy is of utmost importance to you, you've got to learn where the vaults are stored locally. Duh!

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. 🗃️

suggestion of recombination of individual notes using cards to create something new

(have I remarked on this in krajewski?) ᔥ Johann Jacob Moser commented on the ability to breakdown bodies of information into smaller pieces that might be reshuffled into new configurations as one might in a 'game of cards'.

Gotthard Deutsch didn't adhere to any particular theory of information when it came to the size of his notes. Instead Jason Lustig indicates that his perspective was influenced by his personal motto 'de minimis curat historicus' (history's minutiae matter), and as a result, he was interested in the smallest of distinctions of fact and evidence. ᔥ

Jacob Marcus, ‘The Historian’s Credo’, 1958, AJA Marcus Nearprint File, Box 2.

Here the writer, who doesn't lay out any of the general principles of a zettelkasten practice, automatically presumes one idea per card (presumes it from where? zeitgeist) and then jumps into the question of note size and other semantics.

https://hedgedoc.org/

Reclaim Hosting / Reclaim Cloud has a one button installer for HedgeDoc

Friends of the Link uses this for collaborative note taking into the anagora.org.

https://etherpad.org/

A collaborative online editor

I'd listened to this whole episode sometime since 2022-04-05, but didn't put it in my notes.

Mark Robertson delineates how he actively models the use of his note taking practice (using Roam Research) while teaching/lecturing in the classroom. This sort of modeling can be useful for showing students how academics read, gather, and actively use their knowledge. It does miss the portion about using the knowledge to create papers, articles, books, etc., but the use of this mode of reading and notes within a discussion setting isn't terribly different.

Use of the system for conversation/discussion with the authors of various texts as you read, with your (past) self as you consult your own notes, or your students in classroom lectures/discussion sections is close to creating your own discussion for new audiences (by way of the work your write yourself.)

https://www.buzzsprout.com/1194506/4875515-mark-robertson-history-socratic-dialogue-live-roaming.mp3

Barbara Tuchman took her notes on four-by-six inch index cards.

She repeated the oft-advised mantra to only write on one side of a sheet.

What manual did she read this in? She specifically puts quotes on "Never write on the back of anything." so perhaps it might be something that could be tracked down?

Who was the earliest version of this quote? And was it always towards the idea of cutting up slips or pages and not wanting to lose material on the back? or did it also (later? when?) include ease-of-use and user interface features even when not cutting things up?

At what point did double sided become a thing for personal printed materials? Certainly out of a duty to minimize materials, but it also needed the ability to duplex print pages or photocopy them that way.

Thomas Babington Macaulay, 1st Baron Macaulay, PC, FRS, FRSE 25 October 1800 – 28 December 1859) was a British historian and Whig politician, who served as the Secretary at War between 1839 and 1841, and as the Paymaster General between 1846 and 1848. Macaulay's The History of England, which expressed his contention of the superiority of the Western European culture and of the inevitability of its sociopolitical progress, is a seminal example of Whig history that remains commended for its prose style.

I Wish Bear Hadn’t Wasted Years<br /> by Yury Molodtsov

Some generic state-of-the-app in the note taking space.

https://github.com/koreader/koreader/wiki/Highlight-export

Grabe, Mark. “Student and Professional Note-Taking.” Substack newsletter. Mark’s Substack (blog), November 10, 2023. https://markgrabe.substack.com/p/student-and-professional-note-taking?publication_id=1857743&utm_campaign=email-post-title&r=77i35.

Educator Mark Grabe looks at some different forms of note taking with respect to learning compared lightly with note taking for productivity or knowledge management purposes.

Note taking for: - learning / sensemaking - personal knowledge management - productivity / projects - thesis creation/writing/other creative output (music, dance, etc.)

Not taken into account here is the diversity of cognitive abilities, extent of practice (those who've practiced at note taking for longer are likely to be better at it), or even neurodiversity, which becomes an additional layer (potentially noise) on top of the research methodologies.

Yes, this by itself, but note that it also requires that one put in additional work—something many don't want to do in the first place.

This is one of the primary keys.

When taking college-like courses now later in life, I can do so with a much broader perspective. I can focus on the broader shape of the course and the information that intrigues me and place less focus on the nitty-gritty details that a high school or college student might be expected to memorize.

Of course, some of this would depend on the professor and the evaluations they planned on giving. If it was a humanities course where creating a paper or two was primary over memorizing details, then students might be able to get away with something closer to "professional" notes versus "student" notes. Depending on a syllabus, there could definitely be some overlap between the two.

1. Page

Forests. University of California Museum of Paleontology. https://ucmp.berkeley.edu/exhibits/biomes/forests.php Consultado: 11 nov. 2023

Outline: - The forest biome - Tropical forest - Temperature forest - Boreal forest (taiga)

http://sea.nathanstrait.com/journaling/

A lot of this looks surprisingly familiar... (even down to the ordering that it seems to have been discovered).

:)

Hannah Arendt Papers - Digital Collections - Library of Congress

Hannah Arendt apparently kept a zettelkasten. The Library of Congress has a digitized version of it in their archives from her nachlass.

ᔥMikjail in comment on The Two Definitions of Zettelkasten

Did Karl Jaspers have a zettelkasten practice? Did he specifically pass it along to students, like Arendt?

via https://www.reddit.com/r/books/comments/17pitv9/comment/k86tusz/?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=web2x&context=3

One of the primary problems with note taking in most of the mid-twentieth century (and potentially well before, particularly as framed in most educational settings) was that students would take notes, potentially review them once or twice for a test, but then not have easy access to them for later review or reuse.

People collected piles of notes without any ability to reuse or review them. Perhaps we should reframe the collector's fallacy as this: collection without reuse has dramatically decreasing returns. Certainly there may be some small initial benefit in writing it down as a means of sense making, but not reviewing it past a short period of two weeks or even several months and not being able to reuse it in the long term is a travesty, especially in a world of information overload.

Protolyst (collaborative note taking tool) is a product that Dr. Maddy is developing and showcasing in her YouTube Channel playlists.

Protolyst <br /> https://protolyst.org/

• Freemium model
• Focus on group collaboration over individual use

You can export Pages in your workspace as PDFs with more export formats to be added in the future (I did see one other snippet that indicated .csv format export, but it doesn't appear to have .md support to dovetail with all the other tools which use this as a baseline)

Found ᔥDr. Maddy in the description from Want a Simplified Zettelkasten? For Beginners

I take issue with this statement from the translators. Do they come about it themselves or does it stem from Eco?

The general affordances of many modalities are very similar, though the ease of use and speed in arrival at a destination may be slightly different. (That is, cards can be ordered more quickly perhaps, but a similar function can be done using notebooks or slips.)