- Nov 2022
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delong.typepad.com delong.typepad.com
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There are all kinds of devices for marking a book intelligently and fruitfully
General methods of annotating or marking a text:<br /> - underlining, circling, boxing, enclosing, or highlighting - vertical lines in margin - stars, asterisks, symbols, dogears, (implied: bookmarks) - numbers sequencing arguments - page numbers as cross references - writing in the margin: questions and answers - writing in the endpapers
Are there other methods and marks that aren't catalogued here?
The idea of drolleries used as mnemonics is one which quickly comes to mind.
They do mention cross-references to page numbers within the text, but fail to mention links to ideas in other texts. (Perhaps they cover this later under syntopical reading and marking?)
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the front endpapers are oftenthe most important. Some people reserve them for a fancybookplate.
Adler and Van Doren indicate that outlining the arguments and structure of a book on its endpapers is a better and higher measurement of one's ownership of a text compared to a bookplate which only indicates the lower level of "financial" ownership.
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The endpapers at the back ofthe book can be used to make a personal index of the author'spoints in the order of their appearance.
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Marking a book is literally an expression of your differences or your agreements with the author. It is the highest respect you can pay him.
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Reading a book should be a conversation between you andthe author.
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writing your reactions downhelps you to remember the thoughts of the author.
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Second, reading, if it is active, is thinking, and thinking tendsto express itself in words, spoken or written. The person whosays he knows what he thinks but cannot express it usually doesnot know what he thinks.
Active reading is thinking, and thinking requires expression which can come in many forms including both spoken and written ones.
I like that he acknowledges that expression (and thus thinking) can be done in both oral or written forms.
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Why is marking a book indispensable to reading it? First,it keeps you awake-not merely conscious, but wide awake.Second, reading, if it is active, is thinking, and thinking tendsto express itself in words, spoken or written. The person whosays he knows what he thinks but cannot express it usually doesnot know what he thinks. Third, writing your reactions downhelps you to remember the thoughts of the author.
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. Full ownership of a bookonly comes when you have made it a part of yourself, and thebest way to make yourself a part of it-which comes to thesame thing-is by writing in it.
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The pencil then becomes the sign of your alertness while you read.
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Knowing what the four questions are is not enough. Youmust remember to ask them as you read.
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4. WHAT OF IT?
This reminds me of the purpose of reading at CAA. If you tell no one about it, then it wasn't worth the effort. What new did you learn and how did you pass that on to improve your friends, colleagues, and society?
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3. Is THE BOOK TRUE, IN WHOLE OR PART?
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2. WHAT IS BEING SAID IN DETAIL, AND HOW?
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1. WHAT IS THE BOOK ABOUT AS A WHOLE?
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There are four main questions youmust ask about any book.
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inspectional reading is always active.
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To use a good book as a sedative is conspicuous waste.
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Superficialreading is the first necessary step in the interpretation of abook's contents.
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Systematic skimming, in other words,anticipates the comprehension of a book's structure.
also includes opening oneself up to open questions one might either ask themselves or those which the author proposes.
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A better formula is this : Every book should be readno more slowly than it deserves, and no more quickly than youcan read it with satisfaction and comprehension.
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the primarytask-recognized as such by all speed reading courses-is tocorrect the fixations and regressions that slow so many readersdown
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This is a rhetorical flourish, and it deserves what mererhetoric always deserves
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The tremendous pleasure that can come from readingShakespeare, for instance, was spoiled for generations of highschool students who were forced to go through Julius Caesar,As You Like It, or Hamlet, scene by scene, looking up all thestrange words in a glossary and studying all the scholarly footnotes. As a result, they never really read a Shakespearean play.
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The answer lies in an important and helpful rule of reading that is generally overlooked.That rule is simply this: In tackling a difficult book for the firsttime, read it through without ever stopping to look up orponder the things you do not understand right away.
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You will be surprised to find out howmuch time you will save, pleased to see how much more youwill grasp, and relieved to discover how much easier it all canbe than you supposed.
The authors don't cover it, but the skimming portion of inspectional reading helps one to build some of the context which the author is attempting to relay. Preloading some of this context will decrease one's mental burden when more deeply and actively attempting to consume a text.
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You should also be able to placethe book even more accurately than before in your mental cardcatalogue, for further reference if the occasion should everarise.
use of "mental card catalogue" as memory
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Of course, if theblurb is nothing but a puff for the book, you will ordinarily beable to discover this at a glance. But that in itself can tell yousomething about the work. Perhaps the book does not sayanything of importance-and that is why the blurb does notsay anything, either.
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Milton,for example, wrote more or less lengthy headings, or "Arguments," as he called them, for each book of Paradise Lost.
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Skimming or pre-reading is thefirst sublevel of inspectional reading.
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there are two types ofinspectional readin
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Weare on record as holding that unlimited educational opportunity-or, speaking practically, educational opportunity thatis limited only by individual desire, ability, and need-is themost valuable service that society can provide for its members.
This broadly applies to both oral and literate societies.
Desire, ability, and need are all tough measures however... each one losing a portion of the population along the way.
How can we maintain high proportions across all these variables?
Tags
- reading practices
- John Milton
- books
- fixations
- reading for understanding
- societies
- waste
- orality vs. literacy
- subject headings
- arguments
- tables of contents
- comparative anthropology
- analytical reading
- bookplates
- understanding
- expression
- four questions of reading
- Mortimer J. Adler
- outlining
- obligations of the reader
- skimming
- superficial reading
- regressions
- writing for understanding
- annotations as mnemotechnics
- valuations
- respect
- history of the book
- rhetoric
- purpose of reading
- questioning authority
- conversations with the text
- demanding readers
- fake it until you make it
- purpose
- literacy
- inspectional reading
- good books
- analytical tables of contents
- human resources
- endpapers
- Paradise Lost
- themes
- ownership of knowledge
- truth
- drolleries
- reading
- William Shakespeare
- open questions
- context
- topical headings
- active reading
- disagreement
- indices
- book ownership
- lifelong learning
- anthropology
- ownership
- rules of thumb
- speed reading
- sedatives
- public relations
- CAA
- quotes
- rhetorical flourishes
- pedagogy
- sleep
- card catalogs
- examples
- alertness
- reading with a pen in hand
- interpretations
- annotations
- comprehension
- make up your own mind
- agreement
- card index as memory
Annotators
URL
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www.youtube.com www.youtube.com
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Tech is friction. Tech is just ways of mediating friction."<br /> —Bob Doto #
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forum.zettelkasten.de forum.zettelkasten.de
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https://forum.zettelkasten.de/discussion/848/zettelizers
A thread about what to call those who have a zettelkasten or those who practice the method.
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Zettelphile
This also has a nod to the idea of "filing". 😁
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Being an English only speaker I love the mystery invoked by the German term "Zettelkasten".
Example of someone who sees "mystery" in the idea of Zettelkasten, which becomes part of the draw into using it.
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www.fastcompany.com www.fastcompany.com
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joinfediverse.wiki joinfediverse.wiki
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https://joinfediverse.wiki/How_to_host_your_own_Fediverse_instance%3F
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twitter.com twitter.com
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<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>I've been told since the first day I started working at the Division of Hospital Medicine at @UCSF that my work doesn't bring in $ to cover my salary. It's a narrative of manufactured scarcity, a common tactic in capitalism. The CEO is making $1.85 million plus bonuses.
— Rupa Marya, MD (@DrRupaMarya) November 4, 2022
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>A Hospitalist’s economic value is in what we *save* the system in terms of quality-driven care and patient throughput (DC/unit time), not in how much we bring in through profees. Because of how the system is structured, you’ll only see our value when we aren’t there.
— Rupa Marya, MD (@DrRupaMarya) November 4, 2022This sounds a lot like hospitalists fall under David Graeber's thesis in Bullshit Jobs that the more necessary and useful you are the less you're likely to get paid and be valued.
I suspect the ability to track an employees' direct level of productivity also fits into this thesis. One can track the productivity of an Amazon warehouse worker or driver, but it's much more difficult to track the CEOs direct productivity.
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www.youtube.com www.youtube.com
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www.youtube.com www.youtube.com
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vS-b_RUtL1A
LATCH method for search within note taking (Location, Alphabet, Time, Category, and Hierarchy)
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infiniteconversation.com infiniteconversation.com
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https://infiniteconversation.com/
an AI generated, never-ending discussion between Werner Herzog and Slavoj Žižek. Everything you hear is fully generated by a machine. The opinions and beliefs expressed do not represent anyone. They are the hallucinations of a slab of silicon.
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www.google.com www.google.com
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Blake, Vernon. Relation in Art: Being a Suggested Scheme of Art Criticism, with Which Is Incorporated a Sketch of a Hypothetic Philosophy of Relation. Oxford University Press, H. Milford, 1925. https://www.google.com/books/edition/Relation_in_Art/BcAgAAAAMAAJ?hl=en
Suggested by
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>"Relation in Art" by Vernon Blake (1925), because it put art criticism on a quasi-scientific footing, articulated what was great about the art of all epochs (including the Greeks), and intelligently criticised the decline of art in the 20th century.
— Codex OS (@codexeditor) November 5, 2022
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de.wikipedia.org de.wikipedia.org
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Even after his death, articles he had written appeared in the CTC Gazette (CTC = Cyclists' Touring Club), such as the description of a wheel with balloon tires and small gears in July 1930, which is considered the first mountain bike or its forerunner. [13] [2] [14]
Vernon Blake, in a posthumous article in the CTC Gazette from July 1930, wrote a description of a bicycle with balloon tires and small gears, which is now considered the first mountain bike.
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www.arthurperret.fr www.arthurperret.fr
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Chris Aldrich est un fin connaisseur de l’histoire de la fiche.
Something I never thought would be written of me, surely.
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baty.blog baty.blog
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I'm pretty much done thinking about "tools for thought". It quickly becomes an infinity of navel gazing and a complete waste of time. It's an easy topic for budding "influencers" because you don't actually need to know anything. All they need is to spend some time with a new bit of software and tell people how they should use it and the next thing you know they're selling an online course via their budding YouTube channel.
scathing, but broadly true...
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www.openculture.com www.openculture.com
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library.harvard.edu library.harvard.edu
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https://library.harvard.edu/collections/reading-harvard-views-readers-readership-and-reading-history
Reading: Harvard Views of Readers, Readership, and Reading History<br /> Exploring the intellectual, cultural, and political history of reading as reflected in the historical holdings of the Harvard's libraries.
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notebookofghosts.com notebookofghosts.com
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https://notebookofghosts.com/2018/02/25/a-brief-guide-to-keeping-a-commonplace-book/
very loose and hands-off on dictating others' practices
nothing new to me really...
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I also suggest letting your first commonplace be a trial run.
Because your note taking practices will grow and evolve, don't get over-involved in too many specifics up front. Start somewhere and see where it goes.
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This is one compiler’s approach to keeping a commonplace book.
Commonplacing is a personal practice.
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en.wikisource.org en.wikisource.org
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A commonplace book is what a provident poet cannot subsist without, for this proverbial, reason, that "great wits have short memories;" and whereas, on the other hand, poets, being liars by profession, ought to have good memories; to reconcile these, a book of this sort, is in the nature of a supplemental memory, or a record of what occurs remarkable in every day's reading or conversation. There you enter not only your own original thoughts, (which, a hundred to one, are few and insignificant) but such of other men, as you think fit to make your own, by entering them there. For, take this for a rule, when an author is in your books, you have the same demand upon him for his wit, as a merchant has for your money, when you are in his. By these few and easy prescriptions, (with the help of a good genius) it is possible you may, in a short time, arrive at the accomplishments of a poet, and shine in that character[3].
"Nullum numen abest si sit prudentia, is unquestionably true, with regard to every thing except poetry; and I am very sure that any man of common understanding may, by proper culture, care, attention, and labour, make himself whatever he pleases, except a good poet." Chesterfield, Letter lxxxi.
See also: https://en.m.wikisource.org/wiki/Page:The_Works_of_the_Rev._Jonathan_Swift,_Volume_5.djvu/261 as a source
Swift, Jonathan. The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift. Edited by Thomas Sheridan and John Nichols. Vol. 5. 19 vols. London: H. Baldwin and Son, 1801.
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www.bisley.sk www.bisley.sk
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www.amazon.com www.amazon.com
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www.amazon.com www.amazon.com
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www.amazon.com www.amazon.com
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www.vaultz.com www.vaultz.com
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https://www.vaultz.com/vaultz-vz01395-black-locking-4x6-index-card-cabinet-double-drawer
These are the type used by various people including Scott P. Scheper.
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www.shopbrodart.com www.shopbrodart.com
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N.B. presuming the 4 1/8" H dimension is even the outer dimension, this means that one can't easily keep tab cut dividers which often go from 4 3/8" to 4 1/2" tall in these boxes with the lids on properly.
Instead, one may prefer their slightly larger microfiche boxes which go up to 4 3/4" which should also presumably fit their microfiche divider guides for sectioning one's work.
Another subtle difference in these two boxes is that the smaller is 60-pt paper versus 40-pt for the larger microfiche box, which means that while sturdy, isn't quite as sturdy.
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www.shopbrodart.com www.shopbrodart.com
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These should easily fit 4 x 6" index cards as well as card dividers with taller tabs which commercially don't often get taller than 4 1/2".
See also microfiche divider guides.
Tags
- microfiche boxes
- archival materials
- boxes
- Brodart
- cardboard boxes
- 4 x 6" index cards
- zettelkasten boxes
- microfiche
Annotators
URL
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www.nytimes.com www.nytimes.com
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Mason Currey’s book “Daily Rituals: Women at Work.” It gives cheerful summaries about how some of the most prolific, successful artists managed their time.
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From the beginning I found myself deeply challenged and stuck — freaked out by the blank page. So I started to use my skills as a filmmaker. I note-carded it. I had the notes above my computer, and I got to do a little “X” when I finished the draft of a chapter; it was this really satisfying moment.
Erin Lee Carr talks about using index cards to write a book about her father, but her practice sounds more like index cards with headings as a means of structuring a story and not actually writing the entire work out on cards.
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“Don’t buy into your myth.”
Stanley Meyer always said, "Don't believe your own publicity."
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always take the meeting
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<small><cite class='h-cite via'>ᔥ <span class='p-author h-card'>Billy Oppenheimer</span> in The Notecard System: Capture, Organize, and Use Everything You Read, Watch, and Listen To (<time class='dt-published'>11/03/2022 16:53:44</time>)</cite></small>
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www.youtube.com www.youtube.com
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LhH1BOdLKq4
linked notes:<br /> https://docdrop.org/video/LhH1BOdLKq4/
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Harvard a guy by the name of um Alfred Bushnell Hart uh Well Albert sorry Albert I always get Alfred 00:02:31 and Albert wrong um wrote a five volume set of primary sources and he was one of the first um American historians that was actually um trained in Germany by Prof you know 00:02:43 in this new kind of professional history that that they began doing at about that time
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primary source uh press books thing
US History and Primary Source Anthology, volume 1<br /> https://minnstate.pressbooks.pub/ushistory1/
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twitter.com twitter.com
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<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>3/ Champion your competition’s work<br><br>With his reading list email, on podcasts, in his bookstore, Ryan promotes other books more than his own.<br><br>When asked, he’ll say:<br><br>“Authors think they’re competing with other authors. They’re not. They’re competing with people not reading.”
— Billy Oppenheimer (@bpoppenheimer) August 24, 2022
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billyoppenheimer.notion.site billyoppenheimer.notion.site
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Carlin’s bags of categorized ideas, from the archives of George Carlin
George Carlin kept his slips (miscellaneous scraps of collected paper with notes) sorted by topic name in Ziploc bags (literally that specific brand given the photo's blue/purple signature on the bag locks).
This is similar to others, including historian Keith Thomas, who kept his in labeled envelopes.
Tags
Annotators
URL
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billyoppenheimer.com billyoppenheimer.com
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Oppenheimer, Billy. “The Notecard System: Capture, Organize, and Use Everything You Read, Watch, and Listen To.” Billy Oppenheimer (blog), August 26, 2022. https://billyoppenheimer.com/notecard-system/.
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When he was coming up as a writer, the author and journalist Rex Murphy would write out longhand favorite poems and passages. He was asked, what’s that done for you? “There’s an energy attached to poetry and great prose,” Murphy said. “And when you bring it into your mind, into your living sensibility, by some weird osmosis, it lifts your style or the attempts of your mind.” When you read great writing, when you write down a great line or paragraph, Murphy continues, “somehow or another, it contaminates you in a rich way. You get something from it—from this osmotic imitation—that will only take place if you lodge it in your consciousness.”
This writing advice from Rex Murphy sounds like the beginning portions of Benjamin Franklin's advice on writing and slowly rewriting one's way into better prose styles.
Link to Franklin's quote
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David Brooks talks about what he calls the “theory of maximum taste.” It’s similar to what Murphy is saying. “Exposure to genius has the power to expand your consciousness,” Brooks writes. “If you spend a lot of time with genius, your mind will end up bigger and broader than if you [don’t].”
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Ronald Reagan notecard
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here
this source doesn't resolve properly, but goes to the Notion page where Oppenheimer apparently wrote the article originally
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evolution of my processes.
A note taking practice is almost always an evolving process with a variety of different pressures and variables in how it takes form.
List out these variables and pressures.
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Tiago’s methodology is app-agnostic. He’s a systems and principles kind of thinker, so even though I use physical notecards, his work has influenced the evolution of my processes.
Billy Oppenheimer indicates that Tiago Forte's systems and methods have influenced the evolution of his own note taking process.
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Robert Greene’s notecards
Looks kind of like Billy Oppenheimer's box choice is heavily influenced by Robert Greene's.
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I review the cards way more than I originally thought was necessary. Almost daily, I engage with the boxes in one way or another.
Oppenheimer interacts with his zettelkasten almost daily. He reviews them more often than he originally thought he would.
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Do you keep track of what cards you’ve used and haven’t used? No. If I need to, I’ll search the various places online I might have used the contents of a notecard.
Oppenheimer doesn't have a system for tracking which cards he's used or not. When necessary he relies on manual search to find those places, but doesn't say if he still reuses them or how often.
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How do you make sure you don’t lose track of cards? I don’t make sure I don’t lose track of cards. As I said above and as some of the people below talk about, one of the joys of the system is when you surprise yourself, when you rediscover, when you find the perfect card while you were looking for something else.
Oppenheimer doesn't keep track of specific cards (he didn't discuss how he files them, other than loosely together, potentially for specific projects) and finds that this creates a greater amount of surprise for him when searching for ideas within his system.
Missing here is any sort of topic or subject headings.... double check this as it's a key to most systems.
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I went with a smaller box because it appears to fill up faster and that is satisfying. Also, it—along with my laptop, iPad, some pens, and a few books—fits in this Carhartt bag I take wherever I go.
This is literally a "tool" bag (meant for hand tools): https://www.amazon.com/Carhartt-Legacy-Tool-16-Inch-Black/dp/B01BBSNZG0
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I never immediately read an article then make a notecard.
By waiting some amount of time (days/weeks/a few months) between originally reading something and processing one's notes on it allows them to slowly distill into one's consciousness. It also allows one to operate on their diffuse thinking which may also help to link ideas to others in their memory.
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When I come across interesting information, I highlight then comment a corresponding question:
Every studio has a slate.
What is the source for this?
It's highly related to having a direction in life, or the famous example of Feynman's 12 Favorite Problems that he always kept in mind to slowly be working at.
Part of having a list of purpose dovetails to how one builds their identity too.
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Throughout this piece Oppenheimer provides examples of notes he wrote which eventually made it into his written output in their entirety.
This has generally been uncommon in the literature, but is a great form of pedagogy. It's subtle, but it makes his examples and advice much stronger than others who write these sorts of essays.
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This reminded me of Robert Greene’s definition of creativity, which is that creativity is a function of putting in lots of tedious work. “If you put a lot of hours into thinking and researching and reading,” Robert says, “hour after hour—a very tedious process—creativity will come to you.”
Robert Green's definition of creativity sounds like it's related to diffuse thinking processes. read: https://billyoppenheimer.com/august-14-2022/
Often note taking, and reviewing over those notes is more explicit in form for creating new ideas.
Come back to explore these.
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On the back of the notecard, I put the book title and page number(s).
Billy Oppenheimer has said that he puts the references for his reading notes on the reverse side of his cards, breaking the long standing rule to write only on one side of one's note cards.
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When I come across something that reminds me of some other story or idea or etc., I write “<=> INSERT RELATED THING” in the margin.
He's literally drawing out bi-directional links to other ideas in his collection of notes as he creates fleeting notes so that he doesn't forget them in the future.
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For example, I recently read about how Lin-Manuel Miranda tells the same story dozens of times to the same person because he forgets who he already told. Once, when he finished telling his collaborator Tommy Kail a story, Kail said, “That happened to me. I told you that.” They both laughed then Kail added, “That’s why you’re cut out for theater, because you’ll tell it like it’s the first time.” So in the margin I wrote, LIKE IT’S THE FIRST TIME:
This is interesting for itself.
(reference: Sicker in the Head)
It's also interesting because it's an example of regular rehearsal that actors, comedians, storytellers, performers and even salespeople often do to slowly hone and improve their performance or pitch. Each retelling and the response it gives provides subtle hints and clues as to how to improve the story or performance on the next go round, or at least until the thing is both perfected and comes out the same way every time.
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When I come across interesting information, I underline then write a corresponding question in the margin. So what I underlined is an answer to the question.
This practice is quite similar to writing out good spaced repetition question/answer cards for forcing active recall and better long term memory.
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Randall Stutman, an executive advisor and prolific note-taker, says, “collecting insights is just the preamble to what really matters: reviewing, with some level of consistency, those insights. You have to routinely make those insights available to yourself.” “Wisdom is only wisdom if you can act on it,” Randall says. “In the review process, you’re making those insights available for your mind to act on.”
Regular review through one's note cards is important for the memory portion of directly remembering your insights and received wisdom, but they're also important for helping to allow you to grow them into new ideas as well as combining them with other ideas to allow dramatic innovation.
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can
typo
(can't)
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The novelist and screenwriter Raymond Chandler said he avoided reading books written by someone who didn’t “take the pains” to write out the words. (It used to be common for writers to dictate into a recorder then have an assistant transcribe those words.) “You have to have that mechanical resistance,” Chandler wrote in a 1949 letter to actor/writer Alex Barris. “When you have to use your energy to put those words down, you are more apt to make them count.”
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If you can’t talk yourself into using your energy to write or type something out, it’s probably not worth capturing.
Being willing to capture an idea by spending the time writing it out in full is an incredibly strong indicator that it is actually worth capturing. Often those who use cut and paste or other digital means for their note capture will over-collect because the barrier is low and simple.
More often than not, if one doesn't have some sort of barrier for capturing notes, they will become a burden and ultimately a scrap heap of generally useless ideas.
In the end, experience will eventually dictate one's practice as, over time, one will develop an internal gut feeling of what is really worth collecting and what isn't. Don't let your not having this at the beginning deter you. Collect and process and over time, you'll balance out what is useful.
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Luhmann writes,
The link here to Luhmann's article is a https://geniuslink.com/ which is specifically built for influencers to use for tracking and affiliate marketing.
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One of the big lies notetakers tell themselves is, “I will remember why I liked this quote/story/fact/etc.”
Take notes for your most imperfect, forgetful future self. You're assuredly not only not going to remember either the thing you are taking notes for in the first place, but you're highly unlikely to remember why you thought it was interesting or intriguing or that clever thing you initially thought of at the same time.
Capture all of this quickly in the moment, particularly the interesting links to other things in your repository of notes. These ideas will be incredibly difficult, if not impossible, for one to remember.
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He has a warehouse of notecards with ideas and stories and quotes and facts and bits of research, which get pulled and pieced together then proofread and revised and trimmed and inspected and packaged and then shipped.
While the ancients thought of the commonplace as a storehouse of value or a treasury, modern knowledge workers and content creators might analogize it to a factory where one stores up ideas in a warehouse space where they can be easily accessed, put into a production line where those ideas can be assembled, revised, proofread, and then package and distributed to consumers (readers).
(summary)
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And improving the quality and quantity of material available to your brain when you sit down to create something—that is why we implement The Notecard System.
Increasing the quantity and quality of ideas and materials one has at their disposal when one desires to create something new is one of the reasons for having a note taking system.
memory, learning, sense making, improving understanding, improved creativity, and others are also at play... any others? we should have a comprehensive list eventually.
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If you are like Lebron James or Paul Simon, if you were born with a gift for recall, you might not need a note-taking system.
I would suggest that this is wholly wrong as both of the memories described are honed for specific situations and not broadly applicable.
Even those with good natural memories as well as those with significant mnemonic practices can benefit from a structured note taking practice.
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“People always say of great athletes that they have a sixth sense,” Malcolm Gladwell says in Miracle and Wonder: Conversations with Paul Simon. “But it’s not a sixth sense. It’s memory.” Gladwell then analogizes James’ exacting memory to Simon’s. In the way James has precise recall of basketball game situations, Simon has it of sounds and songs. “Simon’s memory is prodigious,” Gladwell says. “There were thousands of songs in his head. And thousands more bits of songs—components—which appeared to have been broken down and stacked like cordwood in his imagination.”
In Miracle and Wonder: Conversations with Paul Simon, Malcolm Gladwell comments on the prodigious memories of both Paul Simon with respect to sounds and Lebron James with respect to basketball game play.
Where these sorts of situational memories built and exercised over time or were they natural gifts? Or perhaps natural gifts that were also finely tuned over time?
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In this article, I am going to explain my adapted version of the notecard system.
Note that he explicitly calls out that his is an adapted version of a preexisting thing--namely a system that was taught to Ryan Holiday who was taught by Robert Greene.
Presumably there is both some economic and street cred value for the author/influencer in claiming his precedents.
It's worth noting that he mentions other famous users, though only the smallest fraction of them with emphasis up front on his teachers whose audience he shares financially.
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The Notecard System
This is almost pitched as a product with the brand name "The Notecard System".
Tags
- diffuse thinking
- reading practices
- Billy Oppenheimer's zettelkasten
- Robert Greene's zettelkasten
- friction
- Randall Stutman
- typo
- definitions
- note taking affordances
- lists
- extended mind
- sales
- resistance
- orality
- write only on one side
- project lists
- revision
- osmosis
- tool bags
- entertainment industry
- index cards
- portable offices
- Lebron James
- Raymond Chandler
- putting in the work
- spaced repetition
- permanent notes
- one liners
- writing style
- tools for thought
- improvement
- reviews
- Malcolm Gladwell
- identity
- idea links
- insight
- content creators
- teach by example
- memory research
- knowledge workers
- references
- commonplace books
- Benjamin Franklin
- read
- music memory
- note taking advice
- practice
- Tiago Forte
- card index as factory space for ideas
- fleeting notes
- rehearsal
- future self
- purpose
- direction in life
- scrap heaps
- surprise
- David Brooks
- Lin-Manuel Miranda
- influencers
- photos
- audience
- open questions
- bags
- index card based commonplace books
- note reuse
- Robert Greene
- combinatorial creativity
- oral revision
- marketing
- idea capture
- Feynman's 12 Favorite Problems
- modality shifts
- information processing
- filtering
- context
- creativity
- Billy Oppenheimer
- slates
- Paul Simon
- topical headings
- Tommy Kail
- organization
- performers
- filing systems
- barriers to entry
- bi-directional links
- email lists
- skin in the game
- names
- serendipity
- affiliate links
- Rex Murphy
- tools for thought
- innovation
- lead by example
- actors
- wisdom
- review
- zettelkasten output
- The Purpose Driven Life
- quotes
- writing advice
- writing as memory
- note taking
- pedagogy
- writing process
- Ryan Holiday
- Ronald Reagan
- evolution of note taking systems
- activation energy
- barriers to collection
- analogies
- examples
- collections
- note taking why
- situational awareness
- long-term memory
- annotations
- pitches
- card index as memory
Annotators
URL
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www.usatoday.com www.usatoday.com
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"If the Reagans' home in Palisades (Calif.) were burning," Brinkley says, "this would be one of the things Reagan would immediately drag out of the house. He carried them with him all over like a carpenter brings their tools. These were the tools for his trade."
Another example of someone saying that if their house were to catch fire, they'd save their commonplace book (first or foremost).
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forge.medium.com forge.medium.com
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It's not an exaggeration: Nearly every dollar I've made in my adult life was earned first on the back or front (or both) of an index card.Everything I do, I do on index cards.
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www.instagram.com www.instagram.com
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https://www.instagram.com/p/CeWV6xBuZUN/?hl=en
Ryan Holiday in the past has made custom 4 x 6" index cards for taking notes for his individual projects.
Pictured: A custom slip with 11 light gray lines, small margins all around, and at the top the printed words: "Courage. Temperance. Justice. Wisdom."
<small><cite class='h-cite via'>ᔥ <span class='p-author h-card'>Billy Oppenheimer, research assistant to Ryan Holiday</span> in The Notecard System: Capture, Organize, and Use Everything You Read, Watch, and Listen To - Billy Oppenheimer (<time class='dt-published'>11/03/2022 16:53:44</time>)</cite></small>
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I used to do this sort of practice before, but I used buckslips instead.
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threadreaderapp.com threadreaderapp.com
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www.amazon.com www.amazon.com
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www.amazon.com www.amazon.com
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www.indiegogo.com www.indiegogo.com
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dainty-sable-264aa3.netlify.app dainty-sable-264aa3.netlify.app
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https://dainty-sable-264aa3.netlify.app/project/measuring_thinking_tools.html
Openness should be broken out into smaller subsections to highlight the importance of supporting standards as a primary item by itself. Many of these axes are easier, low-hanging fruit that developers will iterate on anyway. Focusing on the harder and more subtle features like standards is a better way to go for the audience that can really use this now.
Many of these axes are better for a commercial market.
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www.goodreads.com www.goodreads.com
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Leeson, R. A. Travelling Brothers: The Six Centuries’ Road from Craft Fellowship to Trade Unionism. London: G. Allen & Unwin, 1979.
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/4467218-travelling-brothers
Suggested by Jerry Michalski on 2022-11-02
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github.com github.com
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Language/location related Mastodon Instances:
- https://ailbhean.co-shaoghal.net/
- This server is aimed at Gaelic speakers. Tha am frithealaiche seo ann do luchd na Gàidhlig.
- https://mastodon.scot
- A community primarily intended for (but not limited to) people in Scotland or who identify as Scottish.
- https://mastodon.ie/
- Irish Mastodon
- https://toot.wales
- Twt is the free and open community for Wales and the Welsh, at home and abroad.
- https://ailbhean.co-shaoghal.net/
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Directory of Mastodon and related servers that operate primarily in or are targeted to a locality or region
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www.thecut.com www.thecut.com
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<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>Can we all agree that Zettelkasten note-taking is probably WAY more complexity than we need as creators?<br><br>Here's how to take the best parts & leave the rest to the academics pic.twitter.com/LFnAeBkbpG
— ⚡️ Ev Chapman 🚢 | Creative Entrepreneur (@evielync) February 21, 2022
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www.reddit.com www.reddit.com
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Interesting. So it's like an analog CRM? Multiple people have brought this type of thing up.
reply to u/sscheper<br /> https://www.reddit.com/r/antinet/comments/yka3ro/vintage_yawman_and_erbe_card_index_filing_systems/
These were commonly used for what we now call CRM as well as for accounting, general filing, and all sorts of business and back office use cases in the early 20th century which are now handled by computers. A dozen or so companies made large wooden and metal index card filing cabinets and sold them by the truckload to businesses of every sort.
A lot of the digiterati are just repeating and attempting to reinvent these sorts of ideas using Obsidian, Notion, etc.
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hq.getmatter.com hq.getmatter.comMatter1
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threadreaderapp.com threadreaderapp.com
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mycompanies.fandom.com mycompanies.fandom.com
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Yawman & Erbe Manufacturing Company
https://mycompanies.fandom.com/wiki/Yawman_%26_Erbe_Manufacturing_Company
Some fascinating advertisements for Yawman and Erbe
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scalar.chapman.edu scalar.chapman.edu
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Yawman and Erbe Mfg. Co., - Criminal Identification - 1913<br /> https://scalar.chapman.edu/scalar/ah-331-history-of-photography-spring-2021-compendium/media/yawman-and-erbe-mfg-co---criminal-identification---1913
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americanhistory.si.edu americanhistory.si.edu
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Trade catalogs from Yawman and Erbe Mfg. Co.
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Antique Vintage Yawman & Erbe Card Catalog 3 Drawer File Cabinet
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www.newmarkettoday.ca www.newmarkettoday.ca
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roundup.reclaimhosting.com roundup.reclaimhosting.com
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www.name-doctor.com www.name-doctor.com
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fulgence LANGUAGE FAMILY: indo-european > italic > latinORIGIN: latin NAME ROOT: FULGĕO > FULGENS / FULGēRE > FULGENTIUSMEANING: This name derives from the Latin “fulgĕo > fulgens / fulgēre > Fulgentius”, meaning “illustrious, beautiful, famous, shine brightly, glitter, sparkle”. Fabius Planciades Fulgentius was a Latin writer of late antiquity. Four extant works are commonly attributed to him, as well as a possible fifth which some scholars include in compilations with much reservation. His mytho-graphic work was greatly admired and highly influential throughout much of the medieval period, but is viewed with little favor today.
in relation to the character in the satire Penguin Island by Anatole France who dies by zettelkasten
Naturally a tapir is the nocturnal hoofed mammal with a stout body, sturdy limbs, and a short flexible proboscis, native to the forests of tropical America and Malaysia.
So the name Fulgence Tapir is essentially "a sparkling foraging pig".
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en.wikipedia.org en.wikipedia.org
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Tout introduced original research into the undergraduate programme, culminating in the production of a Final Year thesis based on primary sources.[7]
Thomas F. Tout, one of the founders of the Historical Association, was one of the first professors to introduce original research into the undergraduate program in the early 1900s.
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en.wikipedia.org en.wikipedia.org
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Johnson_(historian)
Charles Johnson wrote a manual with some general advice about zettelkasten, note taking, and indexing:<br /> The Mechanical Processes of the Historian, Helps for Students of History (London: Society for the Promotion of Christian Knowledge, 1922)
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Local file Local file
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raphy. Surely the fault of that savant was not neglecbut over-confidence in the virtue of the fiche, and the true morthat there is no necessary salvation in the fiche and the card-indTh
Surely the fault of that savant was not neglect, but over-confidence in the virtue of the fiche [index card], and the true moral is that there is no necessary salvation in the fiche and the card-index [aka zettelkasten].
Here the author is referencing part of the preface of Anatole France's book Penguin Island (1908) where a scholar drowns in a whirlpool of index cards.
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es the sad fate of M. Fulgence Tapir to his neglecting the mechaniside of historiography.
neglecting the mechanical side of historiography
the mechanical side of historiography is a round about way of saying note taking using a card index or zettelkasten.
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e. T. F. T.
What is this editor's actual name?
My first guess is "Tools for Thought", but that can't be right. 🤣
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le guidance. It has even a touch ohumour in it, as when he remarks, " Saints, Popes, Kings, Jews aWelshmen may be regarded as having no surnames " ; and the woerr
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This is a doctrine so practically important that we could have wismore than two pages of the book had been devoted to note-takiand other aspects of the " Plan and Arrangement of CollectionsContrariw
In the 1923 short notices section of the journal History, one of the editors remarked in a short review of "The Mechanical Processes of the Historian" that they wished that Charles Johnson had spent more than two pages of the book on note taking and "other aspects of the 'Plan and Arrangement of Collections'" as the zettelkasten "is a doctrine so practically important" to historians.
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T., T. F., A. F. P., E. R. A., H. E. E., R. C., E. L. W., F. J. C. H., and E. J. C. “Short Notices.” History 8, no. 31 (1923): 231–37.
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www.jstor.org www.jstor.org
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<small><cite class='h-cite via'>ᔥ <span class='p-author h-card'>atomicnotes </span> in Death by Zettelkasten: a haunting story of information overload! : Zettelkasten (<time class='dt-published'>11/01/2022 12:03:47</time>)</cite></small>
T., T. F., A. F. P., E. R. A., H. E. E., R. C., E. L. W., F. J. C. H., and E. J. C. “Short Notices.” History 8, no. 31 (1923): 231–37.
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publish.obsidian.md publish.obsidian.md
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www.npr.org www.npr.org
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He earned the nickname "The Killer" — not for his music or wild life, but because that's what he called everybody else when he couldn't remember their names. So that's what they called him.
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his 1964 album Live At The Star-Club Hamburg, recorded by the Dutch label Philips as part of a series of live recordings from the German venue, and about which Rolling Stone Magazine later raved, "It's not an album, it's a crime scene ... with no survivors but The Killer."
what a great review...
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She told WHYY's Fresh Air in 1989 that her husband was a walking contradiction — a wild man on stage, boozing and womanizing, who wouldn't allow a drop of alcohol in his own home.
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Lewis made it through a just a few tour dates before succumbing to the press and public's censure, and retreated back to the U.S. That doesn't mean that he was ever publicly regretful. His marriage to Myra lasted a decade
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I just loved the blues. It was the real thing. I kinda always figured I was the real thing too."
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Tags
- Marxists
- Rankin/Bass Productions
- child bride
- Southern Christian culture
- capitalism
- alcohol
- 2022-10-25
- animation
- 2022-10-28
- Frosty the Snowman
- Animagic
- religion
- The Killer
- cancel culture
- Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer
- Rolling Stone Magazine
- environmentalism
- The Hobbit
- Jules Bass
- Myra Lewis
- beyond the pale
- Mike Davis
- quotes
- read
- Marxism
- obituaries
- public shaming
- Santa Claus is Comin' To Town
- analogies
- Pentecostals
- hypocrisy
- disaster relief
- 1964
- stop motion animation
- Live At The Star-Club Hamburg
- sobriquets
- Jerry Lee Lewis
- the blues
Annotators
URL
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www.reddit.com www.reddit.com
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Zettelkasten for technical sciences .t3_yibchw._2FCtq-QzlfuN-SwVMUZMM3 { --postTitle-VisitedLinkColor: #9b9b9b; --postTitleLink-VisitedLinkColor: #9b9b9b; --postBodyLink-VisitedLinkColor: #989898; }
reply to: https://www.reddit.com/r/Zettelkasten/comments/yibchw/zettelkasten_for_technical_sciences/
Presumably you've been the member of or seen a journal club/discussion group for scientific articles, and if not, you could start your own journal club (with yourself) using a zettelkasten by excerpting ideas from what you read, annotating them, writing down open questions, thoughts about what researchers get right/wrong, what could be done better, etc. A zettelkasten practice can be highly fruitful in the sciences. Carl Linnaeus, Newton, and Leibnitz (among many others) had similar looking practices.
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niklas-luhmann-archiv.de niklas-luhmann-archiv.de
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Sascha Fast has translated section 9/8 of Luhmann's zettelkasten into English.
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zettelkasten.de zettelkasten.de
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https://zettelkasten.de/posts/luhmanns-zettel-translated/
Sascha's German to English translation of Luhmann's zettelkasten section ZK II / 9/8.
https://niklas-luhmann-archiv.de/bestand/zettelkasten/zettel/ZK_2_NB_9-8_V
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Topic: Communication with the Zettelkasten: How to get an adequate partner, junior partner? – important after working with staff becomes more and more difficult and expensive. Zettel’s reality
The best and most challenging communication partner you may experience is a version of your past self. A searchable set of notes is the closest approximation of this one is likely to find.
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Zettelkasten with the complicated digestive system of a ruminant. All arbitrary ideas, all coincidences of readings, can be brought in. The internal connectivity then decides.
another in a long line of using analogizing thinking to food digestion.... I saw another just earlier today.
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The Zettelkasten Method is based on this experience: One cannot think without writing - at least not in demanding contexts that anticipate selective access to memory. This also means: without notching differences one cannot think.
Sönke Ahrens roughly quoted this passage or one like it (check the reference), but I criticized it for not being inclusive of indigenous people or oral methods. Luhmann, however, went further and was at least passively more inclusive by saying that one needs to be able to "notch differences" to be able to think, and this is a much better framing.
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On the general organisation of memory see Ashby 1967, p103. It is therefore important that one is not dependent on a myriad of point-by-point accesses, but to be able to rely on relations between notes, i.e. on references that make more available at once than one has in mind when following a search impulse or fixating on a thought
Fascinating to see Ashby pop up in Luhmann's section on zettelkasten in part because Ashby had a similar note taking practice, though part notebook/part index card based, and was highly interested in systems theory.
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Pomeroy, Earl. “Frederic L. Paxson and His Approach to History.” The Mississippi Valley Historical Review 39, no. 4 (1953): 673–92. https://doi.org/10.2307/1895394
read on 2022-10-30 - 10-31
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A recent writer has called attention to apassage in Paxson's presidential address before the American Historical Associationin 1938, in which he remarked that historians "needed Cheyney's warning . . . not towrite in 1917 or 1918 what might be regretted in 1927 and 1928."
There are lessons in Frederic L. Paxson's 1938 address to the American Historical Association for todays social media culture and the growing realm of cancel culture when he remarked that historians "needed Cheyney's warning... not to write in 1917 or 1918 what might be regretted in 1927 and 1928.
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After his retirement in 1947 the Carnegie Corporation of New York persuadedhim to write a history of American state universities, which came to interest him in-tensely. At the end of a year he had written half of the book and sorted his lastnotes. He notified the university administration that he was unable to complete thejob before leaving his study for the hospital where he died, October 24, 1948. Thevolume is being completed by one of his students, Professor Walton E. Bean of theUniversity of California.
Even following his retirement in 1947, Paxson continued to take notes specifically on education for a project which he never got to finish before he died in hospital on October 24, 1948.
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Thus Paxson was not content to limit historians to the immediateand the ascertainable. Historical truth must appear through some-thing short of scientific method, and in something other than scien-tific form, linked and geared to the unassimilable mass of facts.There was no standard technique suited to all persons and purposes,in note-taking or in composition. "The ordinary methods of his-torical narrative are ineffective before a theme that is in its essen-tials descriptive," he wrote of Archer B. Hulbert's Forty- Niners(1931) in 1932. "In some respects the story of the trails can notbe told until it is thrown into the form of epic poetry, or comes un-der the hand of the historical novelist." 42
This statement makes it appear as if Paxson was aware of the movement in the late 1800s of the attempt to make history a more scientific endeavor by writers like Bernheim, Langlois/Seignobos, and others, but that Pomeroy is less so.
How scientific can history be as an area of study? There is the descriptive from which we might draw conclusions, but how much can we know when there are not only so many potential variables, but we generally lack the ability to design and run discrete experiments on history itself?
Recall Paxson's earlier comment that "in history you cannot prove an inference". https://hypothes.is/a/LIWSoFlLEe2zUtvMoEr0nQ
Had enough time elapsed up to this writing in 1953, that the ideal of a scientific history from the late 1800s had been borne out not to be accomplished?
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I am not much like Turner ; but I believe that I am like him in that Iam aware that in history you cannot prove an inference. You cannotprove causation, much as you crave to do it. You may present sequencesof events, whose relationship suggests a link-up of cause and consequence ;
you may carry on the inquiry for a lifetime without discovering other events inconsistent with the hypothesis which has caught your eye. But you can never get beyond a circumstantial case. . . .<br /> "A Footnote to the Safety-Valve," August 15, 1940, Paxson Papers (University of California Library, Berkeley)
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McMaster's Stephen Girard(1918), he said, was a "series of anecdotes . . . without connection"and with little interpretation or analysis." In Rhodes's last twovolumes the facts rarely appeared "to have meaning or to be partsof a coherent structure." " "No simple theme, like that whichdominated his great work, is apparent here. Mr. Rhodes has notseen any constructive unity in the years he covers. Instead of mak-ing a synthesis that would of itself lead the reader to a clearerunderstanding of American history . . . , he has developed his topicsparagraph by paragraph, with often abrupt transition from themeto theme." 26 His failure in the final product followed,
Paxson would have considered it a failure in note taking to have only compiled but not to have synthesized one's accumulated knowledge.
Why take notes if one is not going to use them to some end, whether that be personally in one's life, or to extend and expand the depth and breadth of human knowledge by analyzing and synthesizing the ideas to create something new for others' benefit?
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Paxson wrote several unusually sharp reviews of books by Mc-Master, Rhodes, and Ellis P. Oberholtzer, historians whose methodshave been compared with his own
Examples of other historians who likely had a zettelkasten method of work.
Rhodes' method is tangentially mentioned by Earle Wilbur Dow as being "notebooks of the old type". https://hypothes.is/a/PuFGWCRMEe2bnavsYc44cg
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the writer of "scissors and paste history" ;
One cannot excerpt their way into knowledge, simply cutting and pasting one's way through life is useless. Your notes may temporarily serve you, but unless you apply judgement and reason to them to create something new, they will remain a scrapheap for future generations who will gain no wisdom or use from your efforts.
relate to: notes about notes being only useful to their creator
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The Verdict of History," he scrawled on anote : "There is none — . . . Apart from verif of facts There is noverdict only onesided testimony." "
Note, n.d. (probably made during the 1920's), unsorted, Paxson File.
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He felt that the Beards had gonetoo far in making their facts "generally incidental to some conclu-sion that has pre-determined their selection and arrangement." 1
One can easily leave out bits of evidence or cherry pick evidence to arrive at a given a priori conclusion. The truest thinker or historian will use the fullest context of evidence available at the time to arrive at their conclusion.
Naturally, additional evidence and emergent effects as history unfolds may change some of these conclusions over time.
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"Say what one may of historical philos-ophy," he wrote in 1926, "history is a matter of facts; and theestablishment of facts, desiccated as they may be, is the chief func-tion of the genuine historian."
Review of John B. Black, The Art of History; A Study of Four Great His- torians of the Eighteenth Century (New York, 1926), New York Herald Tribune Books, December 12, 1926, p. 12.
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On the whole, his efficiency probablyreduced the time required for taking and filing notes to the amountother historians spent in note-taking alone. What he wrote in hisnotes was brief, and yet specific enough so that he saved himself thejob of searching at length for what he had read. His mind was freeto reflect and appraise.
Earl Pomeroy suggests that Paxson's note taking method freed his mind to better reflect and appraise his work. This allows a greater efficiency of work, particularly when it comes to easier search and recall as well as the overall process which becomes easier through practice.
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he kepthis note pads always in his pocket
The small size and portability of index cards make them easy to have at hand at a moment's notice.
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He took it toWashington when he went into war service in 1917-1918;
Frederic Paxson took his note file from Wisconsin to Washington D.C. when he went into war service from 1917-1918, which Earl Pomeroy notes as an indicator of how little burden it was, but he doesn't make any notation about worries about loss or damage during travel, which may have potentially occurred to Paxson, given his practice and the value to him of the collection.
May be worth looking deeper into to see if he had such worries.
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He had a separate bibliographical file,kept in six scantily filled drawers in his coat closet, and it is obvious
that he used it little in later years. His author-title entries usually went into the main file, after the appropriate subject index cards.
This is a curious pattern and not often seen. Apparently it was Paxson's practice to place his author-title entries into his main file following the related subject index cards instead of in a completely separate bibliographical file. He did apparently have one comprised of six scantily filled drawers which he kept in his coat closet, but it was little used in his later years.
What benefits might this relay? It certainly more directly relates the sources closer in physical proximity within one's collection to the notes to which they relate. This might be of particular beneficial use in a topical system where all of one's notes relating to a particular subject are close physically rather than being linked or cross referenced as they were in Luhmann's example.
A particular color of cards may help in this regard to more easily find these sources.
Also keep in mind that Paxson's system was topical-chronological, so there may also be reasons for doing this that fit into his chronological scheme. Was he filing them in sections so that the publication dates of the sources fit into this scheme as well? This may take direct review to better known and understand his practice.
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While he didnot attempt to write down all that he thought and knew, apparentlyhe was seldom if ever at a loss to find a place for a note. He filedaway successive series of lecture notes, notes that he took on seminarreports, even notes on the scenery that he saw from a train.
notes on pretty much everything....
shows a more commonplace practice rather than just a zettelkasten focusing on his direct work.
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he also put the scraps to-gether into patterns that fascinated his students.
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Onesuspected that Paxson's love for his work may have tempted him tolabor too long, and that he established a schedule to protect him-self and the keenness of his mind, to keep himself from his deskinstead of at it, as is some men's purpose.
Pomeroy suspects that Paxson may have kept to a strict work schedule to keep his mind sharp, but he doesn't propose or suspect that it may have been the case that Paxson's note taking practice was the thing which not only helped to keep his mind sharp, but which allowed him the freedom and flexibility to keep very regular work hours.
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The mass of Paxson's paper work may appear more clearly nowthan the zest with which he labored, but the essence of his methodwas in the spirit rather than in the product.
Ahrens and others following him have argued that there is a sort of lightness imbued both in one's thinking processes and life by making and accumulating notes. The cognitive load is lessened by offloading one's thoughts onto pieces of paper that can be revised, compared, and juxtaposed as a means of building some written or creative endeavor, even if it's slowly over time.
Frederic L. Paxson's mode of life made this seem to be the case for him. There is evidence that he was easier able to manage his daily life by his note taking system. He accumulated no work on his desk and carried none home and was able to more easily give his attention to others.
Is this a result of breaking things down into tiny, bite sized chunks that were difficult to actually interrupt?
Was it the system or his particular temperament? Are there other examples of this easier mode of life for note takers? Is there a pattern? What portions can be attributed to the system and one's ability to stick to it versus their particular temperaments?
Other than small examples in my own life, this may be one of the first examples I've seen of this mode of work. Definitely worth looking at others.
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November 7, 1916: "I expect to vote for Woodrow Wilson
I wonder if others use the sense making features of a note card system to think through their voting decisions? This seems an interesting and useful exercise which Paxson has done.
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And our president must be teacher as well as doer.
Our president must be in equal measures a teacher, a leader, and a doer.
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None of these notes wasever used in his writing; probably they were taken with no thoughtof specific use, but out of absorption in the American scene.
It's quite likely that one will take a large number of notes with no immediate goal or plan for use and this is completely acceptable. Often these notes go towards the more immediate goal of forming one's own understanding and setting of a broader tableau for material one will write in the future.
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"Do not take out of a secondarywork a paragraph or its substance and incorporate it in your work. . . . Use it if youmust, but restate it in your own terms, and make its form entirely yours. Give thefootnote of course but remember that you must be the author."
Paxson advised that one should completely know, understand, and own one's sources and materials so that they would be able to act as auteur when relaying those ideas in their own theses.
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"There is no reason why a writer should not useopenly . . . the contributions of a corps of helpers," he said ofJames Ford Rhodes ; "but the result of such historical method isunlikely to be volumes that reveal unity of historical constructionor the ripe judgment and point of view that come only to the writerwho has done his own selecting and discarding among the sources."
Review of James Ford Rhodes, History of the United States From Hayes to McKinley, 1877-1896 (New York, 1919), American Historical Review (New York), XXV (April, 1920), 525. Paxson sometimes filed notes handed in by students in the course of routine checks on their work (to about 1913), and he regularly took notes on students' oral seminar reports, but he apparently did not depend on such notes. On the other hand, he often went out of his way, in his own writings, to refer to related works by his students.
This almost sounds like he's proposing an auteur theory for historical studies rather than film studies.
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Note, "Quotations: make them brief," n.d., unclassified, Paxson File, and note,"Your sentences must be your own." "A long quotation burdens your text. Theprinter commonly puts it in a different type and indicates that it is a thing apart.The quotation will be most effective when it is brief and pertinent and may beamalgamated in your own paragraph. The more completely you understand yoursources the more aptly & gracefully you will quote." "Do not take out of a secondarywork a paragraph or its substance and incorporate it in your work. . . . Use it if youmust, but restate it in your own terms, and make its form entirely yours. Give thefootnote of course but remember that you must be the author."
Paxson doesn't directly indicate to rewrite for one's own digestion and understanding process, but hints at it strongly when he says that "Your sentences must be your own." By making and owning your sentences, you ought to have completely understood the ideas and made them a part of you prior to transmitting them back along to others.
Under Paxon's framing and knowing that he also sometimes held onto is notes for a while before forming final opinions, one's notes, even when public (like my own are), are still just partial truths of thought caught in the moment. It takes further digestion and juxtaposition with additional thoughts which are later rewritten in longer form to make articles, books, etc.
Note taking is a process of sense making seeking out the truth of a situation.
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the author must not merely articulate his sources; he mustdigest them. A long passage quoted or closely followed "remainsan undigested bit of foreign matter." "Over quotation may meanunder thought."
relatable to: https://hypothes.is/a/wIyvtm0oEeyNypNtc--Clw
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A note system, he told his stu-dents, should permit rearrangement and study of notes in differentrelationships "until the fact itself is brought out against the back-ground in all its important details."
- Note headed "notes," n.d., Paxson File, unclassified.
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Hethus followed, over a wider range of data than any one man couldhope to use fully, the advice that he sometimes gave in reviews,that a historian should work fully through the background material.
Frederic L. Paxson frequently advised that a historian should work fully through the background material.
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At all events notes on news-papers comprise the greater part of the Paxson note collection
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He was impressed by the difference between written history and(though he did not use the phrase) what Charles A. Beard called"history as actuality"
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s notes accumulated, hefiled them under new and subsidiary headings, with cross-references(on the index card) to related headings, which might be numerousand many years remote.
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he file wascomplex enough, and the task it represented was large enough, sothat few of his sixty-five doctors, who watched the file grow in theseminar as part of the historical laboratory process, have main-tained full files of their own.
Owing to the size and complex nature of Paxson's note collection which he used and demonstrated to his students in his teaching and historical laboratory process, few of the sixty-five doctors who studied under him maintained files of their own.
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he three-by-five inch slipsof thin paper eventually filled about eighty wooden file drawers.And he classified the notes day by day, under topical-chronologicalheadings that eventually extended from 4639 B.C. to 1949, theyear after his death.
Frederic L. Paxson kept a collection of 3 x 5 " slips of thin paper that filled eighty wooden file drawers which he organized using topical-chronologic headings spanning 4639 BCE to 1949.
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Occasionally he noted down what he heard and saw aswell as what he read, and sometimes what he said and did, althoughhe also kept a diary in separate form.
In addition to an extensive note collection, Paxson kept a separate diary, indicating a different practicing in a different form.
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The notes that Paxson left are unique both inscope and in organization. They span his professional lifetime,from the years when he studied colonial history with Channing atHarvard and taught ancient and medieval history at the College ofColorado
span of note taking
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Most men's notes are useless stuff to others, useless even to them-selves with the passage of time, and useless especially because ofchaotic arrangement.
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tie left, however, a record of his own approach to theproblems of writing history in his book reviews, which with hisarticles are probably his most characteristic writings, and in a half-century's accumulation of notes that he used in writing his books,and that he might have used in writing other books.
half-century's accumulation of notes
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Turner'
The author seems to take for granted that we know who Turner is. Would have been nice to have his full name up front at least.
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Annotators
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catalog.huntington.org catalog.huntington.org
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It is possible this Miscellany collection was assembled by Schutz as part of his own research as an historian, as well as the letters and documents collected as autographs for his interest as a collector;
https://catalog.huntington.org/record=b1792186
Is it possible that this miscellany collection is of a zettelkasten nature?
Found via a search of the Huntington Library for Frederic L. Paxson's zettelkasten
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en.wikipedia.org en.wikipedia.org
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Frederick Jackson Turner died in 1932 in Pasadena, California,[1] where he had been a research associate at the Huntington Library.
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Turner's sectionalism essays are collected in The Significance of Sections in American History, which won the Pulitzer Prize in History in 1933. Turner's sectionalism thesis had almost as much influence among historians as his frontier thesis, but never became widely known to the general public as did the frontier thesis. He argued that different ethnocultural groups had distinct settlement patterns, and this revealed itself in politics, economics and society.
Was sectionalism discussed or mentioned in Colin Woodard's American Nations (2011) as part of an underlying piece of his thesis about American history? It seems applicable.
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Turner was never comfortable at Harvard; when he retired in 1922 he became a visiting scholar at the Huntington Library in Los Angeles, where his note cards and files continued to accumulate, although few monographs got published. His The Frontier in American History (1920) was a collection of older essays.
Where did Turner's note cards and files end up? Are they housed at the Huntington Library? What other evidence or indication is there that this was an extensive zettelkasten practice here?
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