reply to u/atomicnotes at https://old.reddit.com/r/Zettelkasten/comments/1fa0240/early_1900s_3_x_5_inch_card_index_filing_cabinet/

This is an excellent question. I strongly suspect you won't find a booklet or book from Macey after 1906 that does this, though there may have been something before that.

You'll notice that on page 9, the 1906 Macy Catalog takes what I consider to be a pot shot at their Shaw-Walker competition in the section "Not a kindergarten". Shaw-Walker was selling not just furniture, but a more specific system, as well as a magazine. Since there's something to be learned for current knowledge managers and zettel-casters in the historical experience of these companies and the systems and methods they were selling, I'll quote that section here (substitute references to enterprise and business for yourself):

Not a Kindergarten

Every successful enterprise knows its own requirements best, and develops the best system for its own purpose. We manufacture business machinery. Our appliances and supplies are boiled down to a few parts, and simple forms, and will accommodate any system in any business. The office boy can understand and use them. If we undertook to teach the whole world how to run its business, we would have to saddle the cost on those who buy for what we tried to teach those who do not.

System in business is desirable, but no system can make a business successful, where the management is deficient. So called ‘Systems’ often result in useless expense and disappointment. We retain what experience proves useful and practical; so far as possible, eliminating all complicated and useless features. This explains how we can employ the best workmanship and material, combined with pleasing designs, and sell our goods with profit at lower prices than the inferior articles offered by others.

There may have been some booklets at some point, but I've not run across them for any of the major manufacturers of the time. (I've only loosely searched this area.) Some of the general principles were covered in various articles in System Magazine which was published by Shaw-Walker, a filing cabinet manufacturer, in the early century. System Magazine was sold to McGraw-Hill which renamed it Business Week, but it is now better known as Bloomberg Business Week. In the December 1906 issue of System, W. K. Kellogg, the President of the Toasted Corn Flake Company, is quoted touting the invaluable nature of the Shaw-Walker filing system at a time when his company was using 640 drawers of their system.

To some extent the smaller discrete "system" was really a part of a broader range of information and knowledge of business and competition. This can be seen in the fact that System Magazine still exists, just under an alternate name, along with a much broader area of business schools and business systems. We've just "forgotten" (or take for granted) the art of the smaller systems and processes which seemed new in the late 1800s and early 1900s.

Other companies had "systems" they sold or taught, much like Tiago Forte teaches his "Second Brain" method or Nick Milo teaches "Linking Your Thinking". However, most of them were really in the business of selling goods: furniture, filing cabinets, desks, index cards, card dividers, etc. and this was where the real money was to be found at the time.

A similar example in the space is the Memindex System booklet that came with their box and index cards. The broad principles of the system can be described in a few paragraphs so that the average person can read it and modify it to their particular needs or use case. The company never felt the need to write an entire book along the lines of David Allen's Getting Things Done or Ryder Carroll's Bullet Journal Method. Allen and Carroll are selling systems by way of books or classes. Admittedly, Carroll does have custom printed notebooks for using his methods, but I suspect these are a tiny fraction of the overall notebook sales for those who use his method.

Here's evidence of a correspondence course from the Library Bureau some time after 1927, which was when they'd been purchased by Remington Rand: https://www.ebay.com/itm/335534180049 . Library Bureau had an easier time as their system was standardized for libraries, though they did have efforts to cater to business concerns the way Shaw-Walker, The Macey Company, Globe-Wernicke and others certainly did.

I think the best examples in broader book form from that time period are Kaiser's two books which still stand up pretty well today for those creating knowledge management systems, zettelkasten, commonplace books, getting things done/productivity systems, second brains, etc.

Kaiser, J. Card System at the Office. The Card System Series 1. London: Vacher and Sons, 1908. http://archive.org/details/cardsystematoffi00kaisrich.

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

Major COVID course correction immediately required. (n.d.). Retrieved February 7, 2022, from https://ozsage.org/media_releases/major-covid-course-correction-immediately-required/

ReconfigBehSci on Twitter: ‘RT @PassivhausPlus: @NHeadteacher @SuziePeat https://t.co/pNsLTRvfSD More than 300 such systems now installed in German schools...if you fi…’ / Twitter. (n.d.). Retrieved 14 January 2022, from https://twitter.com/SciBeh/status/1449880306299785219

McQuinn, C. (n.d.). Schools and childcare services to get up to €72m for ventilation. The Irish Times. Retrieved December 13, 2021, from https://www.irishtimes.com/news/health/schools-and-childcare-services-to-get-up-to-72m-for-ventilation-1.4753597

‘Schools “no Greater Risk” for Children and Staff’. BBC News, 5 September 2020, sec. Health. https://www.bbc.com/news/health-54025708.

Hargreaves, J., Davey, C., Hargreaves, J., Davey, C., Auerbach, J., Blanchard, J., Bond, V., Bonell, C., Burgess, R., Busza, J., Colbourn, T., Cowan, F., Doyle, A., Hakim, J., Hensen, B., Hosseinipour, M., Lin, L., Johnson, S., Masuka, N., … Yekeye, R. (2020). Three lessons for the COVID-19 response from pandemic HIV. The Lancet HIV, S2352301820301107. https://doi.org/10.1016/S2352-3018(20)30110-7

Ferguson, N., Laydon, D., & Nedjati-Gilani, G. (2020). How can we help stop the COVID-19 pandemic? Biomedical Science Journal for Teens. https://www.imperial.ac.uk/media/imperial-college/medicine/mrc-gida/2020-04-28-SJK-Report-9.pdf

Delvin, H. (2020, May 13). Are children less susceptible to coronavirus? The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/may/13/are-children-less-susceptible-to-coronavirus

Research on ice across Europe, as all resources are focussed on COVID-19. (n.d.). Science|Business. Retrieved April 16, 2020, from https://sciencebusiness.net/news/research-ice-across-europe-all-resources-are-focussed-covid-19

Swedish school system has enforced use of hen

But we do want to leave it behind--the words we use--"school system" tell us exactly what is at the center--schools. What we learn are learn systems where learning is at the center which implies tacit-wise that the learner is at the center.

(http://gph.is/1e82Pef)

learner centric