- Oct 2023
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www.youtube.com www.youtube.com
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=80UMxoN0Teo
Megan Rhiannon shows how she's using her FiloFax for planning as well as commonplacing.
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www.reddit.com www.reddit.com
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Posted byu/practicalSloth2 days agoAnyone use a FiloFax or similar for a commonplace book? .t3_17drtzn._2FCtq-QzlfuN-SwVMUZMM3 { --postTitle-VisitedLinkColor: #9b9b9b; --postTitleLink-VisitedLinkColor: #9b9b9b; --postBodyLink-VisitedLinkColor: #989898; } I really like the idea of being able to re-sort pages and was wondering if anyone has tried something like this? I've also considered an "Everbook", but was a bit concerned with all the loose pages of paper flying around everywhere
u/practicalSloth interested in implementing a commonplace book using a FiloFax!
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Anyone use a FiloFax or similar for a commonplace book? .t3_17drtzn._2FCtq-QzlfuN-SwVMUZMM3 { --postTitle-VisitedLinkColor: #9b9b9b; --postTitleLink-VisitedLinkColor: #9b9b9b; --postBodyLink-VisitedLinkColor: #989898; }
reply to u/practicalSloth at https://www.reddit.com/r/commonplacebook/comments/17drtzn/anyone_use_a_filofax_or_similar_for_a_commonplace/
For centuries, many have kept their commonplace books on index cards or slips of paper) rather than on book/notebook pages just like you're suggesting. They then indexed them against topic words and filed the ideas alphabetically rather than writing them in books and indexing them separately.
Some popular versions of the practice which are described/viewable online include:
- Ryan Holiday: https://ryanholiday.net/the-notecard-system-the-key-for-remembering-organizing-and-using-everything-you-read/ and https://thoughtcatalog.com/ryan-holiday/2013/08/how-and-why-to-keep-a-commonplace-book/ Ryan has also covered some of his methods on his YouTube channel as well.
- Billy Oppenheimer: https://billyoppenheimer.com/notecard-system/
- Victor Margolin: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kxyy0THLfuI
- Mortimer J. Adler et. al.: https://boffosocko.com/2023/09/28/mortimer-j-adlers-syntopicon-a-topically-arranged-collaborative-slipbox/
Others with index card or small slip-based commonplaces include Ronald Reagan, Phyllis Diller (whose commonplaced joke file is now at the Smithsonian), and Joan Rivers.
In German, this general practice was called zettelkasten (which translates as slip box), there are lots of people doing versions of this in r/Zettelkasten following some of Niklas Luhmann's method. Many more are using digital platforms like Obsidian, Logseq, etc. for this.
Certainly putting it into a FiloFax is a flexible and doable option.
I've written a bit about the mistaken identities and differences between Niklas Luhmann's practice which has become popular in English speaking countries over the last decade and index card-based commonplaces: https://boffosocko.com/2022/10/22/the-two-definitions-of-zettelkasten/.
Perhaps some of the examples will give you some ideas for how to best do your own. Good luck!
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ZK system for Project and Task management? .t3_17dp8nl._2FCtq-QzlfuN-SwVMUZMM3 { --postTitle-VisitedLinkColor: #9b9b9b; --postTitleLink-VisitedLinkColor: #9b9b9b; --postBodyLink-VisitedLinkColor: #989898; }
Reply to u/Hileotech at https://www.reddit.com/r/Zettelkasten/comments/17dp8nl/zk_system_for_project_and_task_management/
They don't have the same structure as Luhmann's zettelkasten (they don't really need to and may frankly work better without them), but index cards were heavily used in business and project planning settings for decades prior to the popularization of the computer.
I've documented one productivity method from 1903 called the Memindex which was a precursor to things like the Hipster PDA, the Pile of Index Cards, and 43 folders methods which have been popular since the early 2000s. Details and pointers can be found at The Memindex Method: an early precursor of the Memex, Hipster PDA, 43 Folders, GTD, BaSB, and Bullet Journal systems. Addition details can also be found at A year of Bullet Journaling on Index Cards inspired by the Memindex Methodas well as in the comments.
Index card-based project management techniques with items broken out by task can be used to create physical Kanban boards or even arranged in Gantt chart-like fashion on walls, bulletin boards, or tables.
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www.ebay.com www.ebay.com
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https://www.ebay.com/itm/385498338372
30 drawer card catalog in 2 parts with two writing drawers in the middle and a matching table stand. In mediocre shape and has two replaced drawers (metal and/or plastic, not wood). Drawers are maed in all wood
Listed at $1,5000 for over 3 months. $50 per drawer.
2023-10-12: Still listed for sale. Local pick up only from Brentwood, CA
cost per drawer: $50
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www.ebay.com www.ebay.com
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https://www.ebay.com/itm/186111284362
I love this old two drawer card index which has a custom label set into the top that reads, "Index to Plans". The label is done in large lettering across the top, almost the way old school stores would do gold lettering with a nice thick black drop shadow.
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Father emptied a card le for Margot and me and lled it withindex cards that are blank on one side. This is to become ourreading le, in which Margot and I are supposed to note down thebooks we’ve read, the author and the date. I’ve learned two newwords: “brothel” and “coquette.” I’ve bought a separate notebookfor new words.
—Anne Frank (1929-1945), diary entry dated Saturday, February 27, 1943 (age 13)
Anne Frank was given an empty card file by her father who filled it with index cards that were blank on one side. They were intended to use it as a "reading file" in which she and Margot were "supposed to note down the books we've read, the author and the date."
In the same entry she mentioned that she'd bought a separate notebook for writing down new words she encountered. Recent words she mentions encountering were "brothel" and "coquette".
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Father emptied a card le for Margot and me and lled it withindex cards that are blank on one side. This is to become ourreading le, in which Margot and I are supposed to note down thebooks we’ve read, the author and the date.
Anne Frank (June 12, 1929-1945)<br /> Niklas Luhmann (December 8, 1927-1998)
Niklas Luhmann was a year and a half older than Anne Frank who received her first card index file in February 1943 (likely between the 27th, the date of her diary entry mentioning it and the prior diary entry on February 5th), from her father at the age of 13. She was intended to use it as a "reading file" to note down the books she'd read along with the author and the date.
One can only wonder at how many entries she would have made over the span of her life had it not come to such an abrupt end.
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MONDAY, NOVEMBER 2, 1942Dear Kitty,Bep stayed with us Friday evening. It was fun, but she didn’t sleepvery well because she’d drunk some wine. For the rest, there’snothing special to report. I had an awful headache yesterday andwent to bed early. Margot’s being exasperating again.This morning I began sorting out an index card le from theo ce, because it’d fallen over and gotten all mixed up. Before long Iwas going nuts. I asked Margot and Peter to help, but they were toolazy, so I put it away. I’m not crazy enough to do it all by myself!Anne Frank
In a diary entry dated Monday, November 2, 1942, Anne Frank in an entry in which she includes a post script about the "important news that [she's] probably going to get [her] period soon." she mentions spending some time sorting out an index card file. Presumably it had been used for business purposes as she mentions that she got it from the office. Given that it had "fallen over and gotten all mixed up", it presumably didn't use a card rod to hold the cards in. It must have been a fairly big task as she asked for help from two people and not getting it, she abandoned the task because, as she wrote: "I'm not crazy enough to do it all by myself!"
Tags
- Anne Frank
- reading logs
- zettelkasten
- vocabulary notebooks
- library card catalog
- card index for reading
- card index for business
- Niklas Luhmann
- Anne Frank's zettelkasten
- reading lists
- card index as database
- note collection loss and damage
- note taking applications
- 1943
- write only on one side
Annotators
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Envisioning the next wave of emergent AI
Are we stretching too far by saying that AI are currently emergent? Isn't this like saying that card indexes of the early 20th century are computers. In reality they were data storage and the "computing" took place when humans did the actual data processing/thinking to come up with new results.
Emergence would seem to actually be the point which comes about when the AI takes its own output and continues processing (successfully) on it.
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www.ebay.com www.ebay.com
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https://www.ebay.com/itm/155811111944
2023-10-05 72 drawer library card catalog listed for sale at $850.00 with local pick up only from Mechanicsville, VA. No brand name listed. Plastic drawers with wooden fronts. Two sections of 6x6 drawers separated by a section with three writing drawers. Appears to be a solid piece with a solid base. In generally good condition.
cost per drawer: $11.80
Not a bad deal here, esp. if you're local.
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David Lynch's films are a personally structured output of his zettelkasten of ideas comprised of words, sounds, images, music, sound, people, and moods.
Tags
Annotators
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www.openculture.com www.openculture.com
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https://www.openculture.com/2018/08/how-david-lynch-got-creative-inspiration.html
Lynch has spoken about the use of 3x5" index cards for screenwriting (via Frank Daniel).
Here he mentions writing down ideas for movies on the napkins provided by Bob's Big Boy restaurant. (zettelkasten made of napkins?)
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Local file Local file
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LYNCH: Well, for me, ideas—even a fragment—convey everything. In a spark you see images, youhear sounds, you feel a mood. And it becomescomplete, even if it is a fragment. The original ideacomes with a lot of power, and you have to keepchecking back all the way through the process tosee if you are being true to it.
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LYNCH: No. The whole thing has to make sense toyou, and it has to feel correct. And—but again, it’sbased on these ideas that have been forming andarranging and finally showing you what it is. Andit’s just focusing on those through the process.And if it makes sense, no matter how abstract asense, again it goes back to intuition rather thanjust pure intellect, and something that can be soeasily translated into words by, you know,everyone. Those are beautiful things to me,abstractions. And life is filled with them, andcinema can do abstractions.
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YNCH: No. What happens is, when you getfragments, the whole is not revealed. It’s just thefragments. And then the fragments seem to want toarrange themselves. And a little bit further down theline you begin to see what is forming. And it’s asmuch a surprise to you as to anybody else.
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LYNCH: I know we were doing that, but lookingback, it’s a magical process because you can’t tellwhere ideas come from, and it seems like it’s justboth of us focusing on something. And it was acouple of ideas that were fragments, and thosefragments focus you. And it seems that theyrelease a little lock on a door and the door opensand more fragments start coming in—drawn by thefirst fragments. It’s strange, because if any of youhave ever written anything, you know that one dayit’s not there and then a month later or two monthslater it’s there. And it’s two people tuning into thesame place, I think.
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LYNCH: Well, I think it’s everyone’s experience thatno matter what, things come to us in fragments.
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SCHWARTZ: You’ve said that Frank Daniel at AFIwas one of your first film teachers—he said that inorder to make a feature film you should takeseventy index cards and have a scene for eachindex card, and then you have a feature film.
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www.reddit.com www.reddit.com
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www.youtube.com www.youtube.com
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frank danielle at the 1:29 american film institute 1:30 who was dean of the school uh center for 1:33 advanced film studies 1:34 and he taught a way to do it 1:39 um you get yourself a pack of three by 1:42 five cards 1:44 and you write a scene 1:47 on each card and when you have 70 scenes 1:52 you have uh a feature film 1:56 so on each card you write the heading of 1:58 the scene 1:59 and then the next card the second scene 2:00 the third scene four scenes so you have 2:03 70 cards 2:04 each with the name of the scene then you 2:07 flesh out each of the cards 2:09 and walk away you got a script
David Lynch described the method from Frank Daniel (1926-1996) of the American Film Institute and Dean of advanced film studies who taught students to plot out their screenplays using 3 x 5" index cards. One would write out a total of 70 cards each with scene headings. Once fleshed out, one would have a complete screenplay.
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https://www.ebay.com/itm/126117193513
Library card catalog section listed for $329.00. Single section of 5x1 with 10 drawers. It's had pieces of material stapled on the top/bottom to cover up the stacking holes. Missing card rods. Drawer internals appear to be plastic (70s or later), rods removed and replaced with carpet/material to cover up holes. For free local pick up in Sacramento, CA.
Most likely a Gaylord Bros., but not labeled.
cost per drawer: $32.90
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dougengelbart.org dougengelbart.org
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All of the process capabilities in the individual's repertoire rest ultimately upon basic capabilities within him or his artifacts, and the entire repertoire represents an inter-knit, hierarchical structure (which we often call the repertoire hierarchy).
This section is vital for assessing the capabilities of the remember or the system and knowing what your tools can do.
I think this fits with Ray Dalios definition of baseball card management.
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- Sep 2023
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forum.zettelkasten.de forum.zettelkasten.de
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https://www.ebay.com/itm/275465128542
Saw for sale on/around 2023-05-17 for $3,000, though willing to accept $2,500 (or lower). Still on offer 2023-09-24.
Gaylord Bros. 5 piece sectional library card catalog with two 5x3 sections of drawers, a pull out writing desk (with two pull outs), a top and a base table.
cost per drawer: $100
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www.ebay.com www.ebay.com
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https://www.ebay.com/itm/155778259293
Unbranded four drawer 2x2 desktop card index in oak. See on 2023-09-24 offered for $124.99 plus $92.53 shipping from Hobart, IN. Overall 12" H x 15" W x 15" D, so likely for 4 x 6" cards though the listing says "The inside of the drawers are 3 inches deep, 6 inches wide, and 13 inches long."
Medium condition.
Cost per drawer: $31.25
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https://offerup.com/item/detail/aa30b5cf-993e-3077-9c86-5b36b7d7fee9?q=library+card+catalog
Offered circa July 2023 for $200 and sold circa September 2023.
Gaylord brothers three piece modular library card catalog circa 1950's. Acquired by seller prior to a school demolition. Top cover appears to be homemade and covered with cloth. Other pieces are standard 5x3 grouping of 15 drawers and lower table unit. Missing all the catalog rods.
cost per drawer: $13.30
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notsubrand.com notsubrand.com
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Notsu has a variety of 3 x 5" index card products for productivity and planning.
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www.kickstarter.com www.kickstarter.com
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Jeff Sheldon is the founder and designer of Ugmonk, a brand focused on creating high quality, well-designed products. What started as a small side project in 2008 to create and sell simple t-shirts has grown into a full-blown lifestyle brand which Jeff now runs full time.
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www.libraryhistorybuff.org www.libraryhistorybuff.org
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thoughtcatalog.com thoughtcatalog.com
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This was the original post which Holiday copied to his own site at: https://ryanholiday.net/the-notecard-system-the-key-for-remembering-organizing-and-using-everything-you-read/
Cross reference notes there.
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luhmann.surge.sh luhmann.surge.sh
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We should only write on one side of these papers so that in searching through them, we do not have to take out a paper in order to read it. This doubles the space, but not entirely (since we would not write on both sides of all the slips). This consideration is not unimportant as the arrangement of boxes can, after some decades, become so large that it cannot be easily be used from one’s chair. In order to counteract this tendency, I recommend taking normal paper and not card stock.
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www.ebay.com www.ebay.com
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https://www.ebay.com/itm/195819504280
Brodart 72 drawer library card catalog offered for sale for $1995.00 in at least mid 2023 if not earlier. Local pick up from Twin Lake, MI. A bit beat up. Appears to be maybe late 60s/early 70s. Has plastic drawers.
Two sections of 6x6 separated by three pull out writing desks.
Cost per drawer. $27.70
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https://www.ebay.com/itm/225779061741
Listed on 2023-09-17 for starting bid of $600 with a purchase price of $795.00. With $100 shipping to Los Angeles from Bartow, FL.<br /> In excellent looking condition. Restored?<br /> two drawers, but each one has two rows of cards, so technically four drawers.
Missing card catalog rods, so likely used for something other than cards at one point.
Cost per drawer: $150 per "drawer" at the opening bid price.
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www.reddit.com www.reddit.com
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Market analysis of library card catalogs in 2023.
As card catalogs lost their functionality in libraries and were de-acquisitioned there was a wave of nostalgia which caused people to purchase them, often in auctions, at higher than expected prices. Once they had them, most of these purchasers realized that they didn't have functional uses in their homes for them (beyond wine or liquor bottle storage, small crafts, or use as a zettelkasten, which seem to be the only reasonable upcycling use cases I've seen and the last seems to be very rare and niche). They sit and take up space for very little value in return beyond some esthetic beauty and nostalgia. As a result many soured on their ownership. Most owners naturally want to recoup their original purchase price thinking that relative rarity will save them.
Combined with this there was a resurgence in mid-century design esthetic which had some furniture restorers and designers buying and doing full (and very pretty) expensive restorations of older 20s - 40s versions which sold at auctions for $4,500 and up. Given the rarity of some of these older, fine furniture versions along with the work in restoration and the limited market only those who had a tinge of nostalgia and money to burn made purchases which resulted in a limited number of actual sales.
These two factors mean that almost all of the listings for library card catalogs are heavily overvalued on eBay, Facebook Marketplace, Craig's List, Etsy, etc. The fine furniture restorations have set an artificially high price point which some feel theirs must match as well. The difference in quality however is stark. Because of their size and lack of functionality, there is a relative glut of them on the market which all bear inflated prices. Those who originally spent inordinate amounts for them, feel they will still have that same value to others, so they list them online for inflated prices.
I've been closely watching the online "market" for them for over a year and see the same several dozen or more listed across the country usually in the range of about $30-$60 per drawer. Many are listed as local pick up only, which further hampers the overall market. This also brings up the issue of shipping a 60 drawer card catalog which can easily run in the $800-$1,500+ range which usually requires additional shipping logistics involved with freight. Most catalogs are already overpriced, but adding an additional $1000 tax on top is a bridge too far for all but the highest end of the market. Some platforms like Etsy and eBay which take cuts of the final sale also add to the cost of the sale.
In the year and a half or more that I've been watching, I've only seen a handful of actual sales, all of which were local, and many of which were in the Los Angeles area. All of these sales have been for listings which eventually were reduced down to the $15 per drawer range. One local sale was in Wisconsin was for $10 per drawer (a 30 drawer file) and another in Los Angeles was for $12.50 per drawer (on a 20 drawer file).
A note on condition
Outside of a small handful of fine furniture listings in the $4,000+ range, most ex-Library card catalogs are generally very well worn and not in great condition which makes them less valuable as decoration pieces. In fact, many are often missing their original card catalog rods, have dents, dings, or other cosmetic issues. Some are missing drawers or have replacement drawers which don't match. Some may be slightly mismatched having been purchased in different eras as modular pieces and put together. Frequently they have been modified from their original states to include inserts or other material to fill in the holes which where almost standard in the bottoms of the drawers.
Advice
If you're in the market, know that it is tremendously inflated, a fact which most sellers are aware of as they've got them listed, some for many years, not resulting in actual sales. If you really want one and find it in a reasonable condition, I highly recommend making an offer for it at about $10 per drawer and potentially go up to $15. Anything higher than that is overpaying based on actual recent market conditions. If you have the money to burn, feel free, but keep in mind that like many others in the past, once the initial nostalgia has passed, you've probably got a large piece of relatively non-functional furniture in your home.
It's not common, but some government auction sites will list card catalogs for auction from time to time. Because they actively want to sell them these can be purchased in the $2-10 per drawer range or less. Often they tend toward the larger 60+ drawer range, aren't in good condition, or need to be picked up and shipped to your final destination, usually within a few days of purchase as the original owners don't or explicitly won't handle shipping. These are likely to need some restoration work to be decorative pieces in many homes.
If you want something brand new, you can check out Brodart, which is the only remaining card catalog manufacturer/sales firm I'm aware of in the United States. Their systems are modular, so you can pick and choose what you'd like to have. The only caveat is that they start at $1,700 for their smallest 9 drawer model and can go up to $11,648 (plus shipping) for a full 60 drawer model. The other potential drawback, for some, is that they are made of a mixture of wood, metal and plastic versus the all wood and metal fittings of older vintage models.
If you're in the market primarily for nostalgic reasons, then you might also consider looking at some of the older desktop wooden card catalogs which are often much less expensive, take up far less space, and can be wonderfully decorative. Some of the smaller two to six drawer desktop models have the benefit of potentially serving as recipe boxes or paper rolodexes, zettelkasten, or simply small office storage. Here again, the online markets are likely to be heavily overpriced with 2 drawer models being continually listed at $150 and 4 drawer models in the $250-400 range. These sellers know that these prices don't result in actual sales as they've been sitting on them for long periods of time (presumably hoping to get lucky). Here I'd recommend you make offers in the $20-30 per drawer range to see what you can find. Another benefit is that these smaller models are far cheaper to ship across the country. For additional advice on these, see: The Ultimate Guide to Zettelkasten Index Card Storage.
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www.amazon.com www.amazon.com
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https://www.amazon.com/How-Make-Notes-Write-Allosso-ebook/dp/B0B7FSQP35/
Dan Allosso purchased a 30 drawer card catalog (three sections of 5 x 2 without any base) for $300 in 2022.
It's pictured on the cover of his book "How to Make Notes and Write".
Purchased at $10 per drawer.<br /> local sale
Price mentioned at the end of Dan Allosso Book Club 2023-09-16.
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www.ebay.com www.ebay.com
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https://www.ebay.com/itm/285357243415
Gaylord Bros. 20 drawer library card catalog<br /> listed for $495 in July 2023<br /> $24.75 per drawer
Reduced to $295.00 in September 2023<br /> $14.95 per drawer
Acquired on 2023-09-16 for $250<br /> $12.50 per drawer<br /> local sale
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www.facebook.com www.facebook.com
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https://www.facebook.com/marketplace/item/271076511951674/
Appears to be a single piece with two sections of 6x5 drawers for a total of 60 separated by three drawer pulls. In excellent shape, but missing many rods.
$18.33 per drawer
Listed in Mid-May 2023 for $1,100 in La Palma, CA
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https://www.ebay.com/itm/134584432272
Library card catalog with 72 drawers (brand?) has three drawer pulls<br /> Listed in summer (July?) 2023 for $1,850
cost per drawer is $25.69
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delong.typepad.com delong.typepad.com
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The skill inspectional reader does more than classify a book in his mental card catalogue, and achieve a superficial knowledge of its contents.
a second use of "mental card catalogue", though somehow he doesn't seem to realize the inherent value for building knowledge... ?
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www.reddit.com www.reddit.com
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Anyone thriving with a paper based GTD system?
I've been using a mixture of methods focused around 4 x 6" index cards for a while after having previously done a traditional bullet journal, Day-Timer, etc. and attempting to something similar in a variety of digital contexts including TiddlyWiki, Obsidian, Logseq, etc. (More details/discussion: https://www.reddit.com/r/bulletjournal/comments/15av66m/a_year_of_bullet_journaling_on_index_cards/) Somehow paper always seems to win out for the tactile nature and the decreased probability of things going lost (being out of sight and thus out of mind which happens for me in digital), or dealing with a never-ending list of overwhelming pop up reminders.
I've written a bit about the history of some of these methods, which includes links to some of the bigger examples of each if it helps to see some variety about what each system suggests or photos of them at work. One of the oldest methods from which most of the rest seem to stem is the Memindex from circa 1903.
My current go-to is a Memindex/bullet journal method adapted to index cards rather than a notebook. I've got a card every day for events and to do lists as well as cards for "Future", planned purchases/groceries, etc. I keep a top level card with short lists of what I want to read, watch, listen to, and learn. I also keep a sectioned Eisenhower matrix group of cards for the areas: crisis, productivity, distraction, and low priority. I also have a Projects section with descriptions and lists for each and based on priorities, I'll take individual steps from the project cards and place them onto my daily cards as I go.
Some of the bigger projects may have a top level card followed by cards which breakdown or outline parts of larger processes. I can then lay them out on a table (Gantt chart style) to determine dependencies and create a pseudo schedule. When I'm done, I'll clip them all together in the most appropriate order and number them. As necessary, I'll take some of these cards out and "schedule" them for individual days by placing them behind or attaching them to the appropriate daily cards with a paper clip. (If you do this, make sure the project name and a potential order number designator is on them, so that you can refile them with the project as necessary.)
The key is doing weekly and bigger monthly or quarterly reviews of all the major cards and moving/scheduling what you need to do from either old cards or project cards each week. Going through my entire collection of immediate cards is usually incredibly fast. When I'm done with cards, they get archived away in my card index for future consultation if necessary. I'm also usually making further notes on the cards as I go and cross indexing them, so that if I don't have the notes for a particular project in the project section, it's being written on the individual daily cards; at the end of the week I'll update the project cards and write down the dates of those notes into the project file so that if I need them later they're available (but importantly I don't have to copy over all the notes). After doing this it's usually pretty easy to work on planning the next steps for the coming week/month.
For lower priority projects and to do items, if things sit around too long undone they slowly move down the priority list from crisis to low priority or they slowly move to the back of my projects section where they get reviewed less often.
For those who prefer some visualization, here are two photos which may help in terms of the physical arrangement I'm using: - https://boffosocko.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/wp-1693596706707-scaled.jpg (alt text: Display of two columns of index cards with only the titles on each showing. Column one: Planning Daily, Planning Weekly, Weeks 31-35 August 2023, Sept 02 2023, September 03 2023, Crisis: Urgent/Important, Productivity: Not Urgent/Important, Low Priority: Not Urgent/Not Important, Distraction: Urgent/Not Important, Someday. The second column: Project Priorities Spring 2023, Reading Priorities, Writing Priorities, Learning Priorities, Listening Priorities, Watching Priorities, Purchases Planning, Groceries.) - https://boffosocko.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/wp-16935967219588251569559254031730-scaled.jpg (alt text: My card index for productivity featuring sections for an Eisenhower Matrix, Projects, and tabs for the upcoming 12 months and 31 days in the current month.)
On a day-to-day basis, I keep most of it in an Acrimet card file on my desk, though the longer term storage is in a nearby Singer Card File Cabinet. (I'll often have a full drawer removed from the big cabinet on my desk while I'm working on a particular section.) While travelling about, I store the most important daily use cards in a King Jim Flatty Works case which is about the size of a small notebook or which fits easily into my shoulder bag. If you're all-in on index cards and you need ideas for storage, I've been compiling a relatively comprehensive list of index card storage options.
Having done notebooks and other paper-based planners (Hobonichi) before, I appreciate that the cards are easily moveable and re-orderable, I don't waste any paper or space if I miss days, I'm not as precious about screwing up a new notebook, and I don't have to carry either multiple notebooks, or worry about recopying project pages from one notebook to the next when I'm done. I also don't have to worry about losing large parts of my planning if I lose a whole notebook. It's always easy to have today's card on me at all times or to take small sections on the road as needed. Additionally cards are very cheap. If you're of the sort of camp that having pre-laid out stationery with finer stock, perhaps try Notsu who pre-prints a variety of productivity cards, though only in 3 x 5 inch sizes. There are a few other smaller companies who still do this, but they tend toward the more expensive side.
There are many ways to do variations on these, so take a look at some examples of how others use them and then attempt to evolve a practice which works for you. For example, if having an Eisenhower Matrix section doesn't make sense to you, then drop that part and adopt what does work instead.
For those who are deep into this sort of rabbit hole, I'll also mention that I keep a separate zettelkasten "department" within my collection for notes related to reading/research. (I had to fill that massive Singer card index up with something besides extra wine storage.)
Syndication link: https://www.reddit.com/r/gtd/comments/15pfz8o/comment/jypt023/?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=web2x&context=3
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www.youtube.com www.youtube.com
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GTD on Paper Index Cards. Experimental Encounters, 2023. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vww7JLcrJl4.
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vww7JLcrJl4
8:05 - 16:20 GTD - Capture - Clarify - What is it? - Is it actionable? What is the action? - Is it a project? - Batching - Reflect - Review over lists/calendars daily/weekly - Engage
17:30 They use the phrase "atomic" paper based index cards, so they've been infected by the idea of "atomic notes" from somewhere, though it seems as if he's pitching that he's "invented" his card system as if from scratch.
19:45 He mentions potentially using both sides of the card, against the usual (long term) advice.
20:00 Analogizes his cards as ballerinas which work together, but each have their own personalities and function within the ballet
He's using a leather cover for Moleskine pocket notebook and Manufactum A7 index cards, as well as a box
Sections of his box: - to erase - inbox - next actions - projects (3 categories of projects) - someday - to delegate - tickler (by month and by day; 12 months and 31 days) - blank cards
Mentions erasing cards as he finishes them rather than archiving them.
Inspiration by How to Take Smart Notes by Ahrens
Recommends one item per card to make things easier and more actionable; also improves focus versus having a longer list. (28:00)
Portability
Sustainable (he erases)
High quality textile experience
The ability to shift between associative modes and sequential modes seems to work well with such a system.
They distinguish between atomic notes and "stellar" notes. Stellar being longer lists or more dense notes/outlines/etc.
Project cards<br /> titles and project numbers (for reference) Project numbers in the top right with a P and/or M below it for<br /> - P for paper<br /> - M for email data<br /> - D for digital files which helps him find reference materials
Weekly review with all cards out on the table
Expansion pack includes: - action - calendar - waiting
Search was quick and easy, but had to carry his box back and forth to work.
Stopping doing it because he was losing the history (by erasing it). Moving to notebook and he likes fountain pens. He likes the calendar portion in his notebook.
He tried it out for the sake of experiment.
In the paper world things are more present and "in your face" versus digital formats where things can disappear.
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- Aug 2023
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kingjim.us kingjim.us
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FLATTY WORKS A6 SIZE horizontal# 5460 H4.8×W6.8×D1.4inMaterial Cotton
https://kingjim.us/flatty-works<br /> Flatty Works A6 size horizontal case<br /> ~$24.00
Acquired green version 2023-04-07<br /> https://boffosocko.com/2023/04/20/review-of-king-jim-a6-size-horizontal-flatty-works-case-5460/
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www.lochby.com www.lochby.com
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https://www.lochby.com/collections/frontpage/products/venture-pouch<br /> Lochby Venture Pouch<br /> $44.00
Acquired one of these in early 2023 on sale?
several internal sections including for pens. <br /> will easily fit a handful or so of 4 x 6" index cards for quick travel
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www.rickshawbags.com www.rickshawbags.com
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Rickshaw Bags, Traveler's Notebook Case $59.00
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www.jetpens.com www.jetpens.com
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https://www.jetpens.com/Delfonics-Carrying-Bag-M-A5-Dark-Denim/pd/37102
Delfonics Carrying Bag - M (A5) - Dark Denim<br /> $36.00
Perhaps a bit large, but could be used as a mini-portable office to hold a variety of things including 4 x 6" index cards for work on the go.
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www.jetpens.com www.jetpens.com
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https://www.jetpens.com/Lihit-Lab-Altna-Carrying-Sleeve-Small-Gray/pd/24824<br /> Lihit Lab Altna Carrying Sleeve - Small - Gray<br /> $30.50
B6 is 4.9 x 6.9 inches, so just slightly larger than 4 x 6 inches
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www.jetpens.com www.jetpens.com
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https://www.jetpens.com/Lihit-Lab-Smart-Fit-Carrying-Pouch-A6-Olive/pd/12378
Lihit Lab Smart Fit Carrying Pouch - A6 - Olive<br /> $21.50
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www.jetpens.com www.jetpens.com
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https://www.jetpens.com/Delfonics-Carrying-Bag-S-A6-Dark-Blue/pd/38393<br /> Delfonics Carrying Bag - S (A6) - Dark Blue $32.00
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www.jetpens.com www.jetpens.com
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https://www.jetpens.com/Kleid-Mesh-Carry-Pouch-Mini-Charcoal/pd/37439
Meant for A6 notebooks, but would likely fit 4 x 6" index cards. $17.00
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www.reddit.com www.reddit.com
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Hipster PDA phone case .t3_jjlkh3._2FCtq-QzlfuN-SwVMUZMM3 { --postTitle-VisitedLinkColor: #9b9b9b; --postTitleLink-VisitedLinkColor: #9b9b9b; --postBodyLink-VisitedLinkColor: #989898; } Advice neededAre there nany phone cases that can store some index cards (and preferably a pen)? I need one because I often forget to bring my Hipster PDA, while I almost never forget to bring my phone.
reply to u/smaczek at https://www.reddit.com/r/notebooks/comments/jjlkh3/hipster_pda_phone_case/
If you or others are still looking, I've been using an A6 Flatty case which easily fits several dozen 4x6" index cards along with my phone and a pen. It's probably a better hand carry (esp. with a pen inside), but will fit into my back pocket. Details:
https://boffosocko.com/2023/04/20/review-of-king-jim-a6-size-horizontal-flatty-works-case-5460/
Alternately, I've looked at Rickshaw Bags' Traveler's Notebook case for this as well: https://www.rickshawbags.com/travelers-notebook-case
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www.reddit.com www.reddit.com
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Question: fiction and non-fiction .t3_164ob1y._2FCtq-QzlfuN-SwVMUZMM3 { --postTitle-VisitedLinkColor: #9b9b9b; --postTitleLink-VisitedLinkColor: #9b9b9b; --postBodyLink-VisitedLinkColor: #989898; }
For those that do both fiction and non-fiction work in their zettelkasten, do you consider the portion dedicated to fiction a "department" or a "compartment" within it? or perhaps something altogether different?
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www.advancedfictionwriting.com www.advancedfictionwriting.com
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The Snowflake Method is more specific, but broadly similar to those who build out plot using index cards.
As examples, see Dustin Lance Black and Benjamin Rowland.
Link to - https://hypothes.is/a/043JIlv5Ee2_eMf1TTV7ig - https://hypothes.is/a/ibFMareUEe2bqSdWdE046g
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Ingermanson, Randy. “The Snowflake Method For Designing A Novel.” Advanced Fiction Writing, circa 2013. https://www.advancedfictionwriting.com/articles/snowflake-method/.
Designing writing in ever more specific and increasing levels. Start with a logline, then a paragraph, then acts, etc.
Roughly the advice I've given many over the years based on screenplay development experience, but with a clever name based on the Koch snowflake.
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The first thing to do is to take that four-page synopsis and make a list of all the scenes that you’ll need to turn the story into a novel. And the easiest way to make that list is . . . with a spreadsheet.
Of course spreadsheets are databases of information and one can easily and profitably put all these details into index cards which are just as easy (maybe even easier) to move around
Tags
- Plottr (software)
- spreadsheets
- Dustin Lance Black
- analogies
- fiction writing
- Benjamin Rowland
- writing advice
- read
- card index as database
- card index for fiction writing
- Snowflake Method
- screenwriting
- design
- problem solving frameworks
- Koch snowflake
- card index for writing
- Randy Ingermanson
Annotators
URL
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austinkleon.com austinkleon.com
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Comedian Phyllis Diller had “gag file,” which is now housed at The Smithsonian: Phyllis Diller’s groundbreaking career as a stand-up comic spanned almost 50 years. Throughout her career she used a gag file to organize her material. Diller’s gag file consists of a steel cabinet with 48 drawers (along with a 3 drawer expansion) containing over 52,000 3-by-5 inch index cards, each holding a typewritten joke or gag.
A Zettelkasten for jokes!
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americanhistory.si.edu americanhistory.si.edu
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other jokes did not land because I did not know the movie star or celebrity referenced.
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The main thing I learned while reading through Phyllis Diller's jokes is that comedy has changed a lot since she started her career in the mid-1950s. Her comedy is focused on short one-liners that get laughs in quick succession, while today's comedy is more story-driven. Although a lot of her jokes are very time-bound due to their content, it was interesting to get a glimpse of what was happening at the time a joke was written. Each joke card has a date on it, and the cards span the 1960s to the 1990s. The topic of the jokes told a lot about what people were worried about or focused on at the time the joke was written, whether it was the inflation or student protests of the 1970s, a celebrity's many marriages, or gossip about the president at the time. While, like any comedian, some of her jokes fall flat, I appreciated Diller's hard work in meticulously recording, testing, and filing each joke in the gag file, along with her ability to make a joke about almost any topic.
evidence of comedy shift from 50s/60s of one liners to more story-based comedy of the 2000s onward. Some of this may come about through idea links or story links as seen in some of Diller's paperclipped cards (see https://hypothes.is/a/W9Wz-EXsEe6nZxew_8BUCg).
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www.smithsonianmag.com www.smithsonianmag.com
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"The [joke] file is like a tree," says Diller. "Leaves drop off, and new leaves are added—the new stuff pushes out the old." Along with this cache—Diller refers to it as "my life in one-liners"
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americanhistory.si.edu americanhistory.si.edu
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These index cards are organized alphabetically by subject ranging from accessories to world affairs and covering almost everything in between.
Phyllis Diller's gag file was arranged alphabetically by subject and ranged from "accessories" to "world affairs".
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This beige metal cabinet is Phyllis Diller’s gag file, a categorized archive of the jokes Diller used in her stand-up comedy routines throughout her half-century long career. A small three drawer expansion of the gag file is also in NMAH’s collection (Catalog Number 2003.0289.01.02). The 48 drawers of the gag file, along with the 3 drawer expansion, contain a total of 52,569 3-by-5 inch index cards, each holding a typewritten joke or gag.
52,569 3x5" index cards!
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americanhistory.si.edu americanhistory.si.edu
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Other comedians have maintained their material in joke files, among them Bob Hope, whose file is in the collections at the Library of Congress.
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transcription.si.edu transcription.si.edu
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Phyllis Diller Gag File - Drawer No. 49, Part 1
In this set, you will find cards from the following category: Lockhorns.
https://transcription.si.edu/project/9431
I had some collections of comic strips in my youth, but sadly didn't keep up the practice or them.
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www.smithsonianmag.com www.smithsonianmag.com
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Most of the gags, written from the 1960s to the 1980s, are just like that—one per card. But a few that are more involved sometimes take a few cards to tell.
Most of Phyllis Diller's gag files are written one joke to a card, but some have multiple jokes and some even span multiple cards.
(Note this is a secondary source and can/should be verified against the digital files.)
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www.latimes.com www.latimes.com
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Liebenson, Donald. “Classic Hollywood: Remembering Phyllis Diller (and 52,569 of Her Jokes) at the Smithsonian.” Los Angeles Times, May 12, 2017, sec. Television. https://www.latimes.com/entertainment/tv/la-ca-st-phyllis-diller-smithsonian-20170512-story.html.
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Three weeks and 52,569 jokes later, the job was completed.
While many sources seem to indicate that Phyllis Diller had approximately 52,000 index cards with jokes, the ultimate tally after the completion of transcription for the Smithsonian Institution seems to have been 52,569 cards.
While the Los Angeles times lists this as the number of jokes, it's far more likely to be the number of cards as some cards I've seen have multiple jokes.
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The joke file is a snapshot of American history.”
quote by Hanna BredenbeckCorp, of Smithsonian on Phyllis Diller's gag file
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Hanna BredenbeckCorp, project assistant for the museum, was impressed. “It took me four months to scan all the joke cards,” she said with a laugh.
It took four months for Hanna BredenbeckCorp, a project assistant for the Smithsonian Institution, to scan all of Phyllis Diller's joke cards for subsequent transcription and creation of a searchable digital database.
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www.dtsheffler.com www.dtsheffler.com
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https://www.dtsheffler.com/blog/2015-08-05-one-thought-per-note/ archive version: https://web.archive.org/web/20220124223433/https://www.dtsheffler.com/blog/2015-08-05-one-thought-per-note/
ᔥ[[abramdemski]] in The Zettelkasten Method (accessed:: 2023-08-25 12:00:07)
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www.lesswrong.com www.lesswrong.com
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Writing on small cards forces certain habits which would be good even for larger paper, but which I didn’t consider until the small cards made them necessary. It forces ideas to be broken up into simple pieces, which helps to clarify them. Breaking up ideas forces you to link them together explicitly, rather than relying on the linear structure of a notebook to link together chains of thought.
A statement of the common "one idea per card" (or per note). He doesn't state it, but links to an article whose title is "One Thought Per Note".
Who else has use this or similar phrasing in the historical record? - Beatrice Webb certainly came pretty close. - Others?
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others have reported large productivity boosts from the technique as well.
Which others? where?
To my knowledge there weren't many (any?) examples floating around in 2019.
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jillianhess.substack.com jillianhess.substack.com
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The American Philosopher Eric Hoffer was a great quotation collector. he has boxes and boxes of them all typed up on index cards. I began doing it after reading his biography where before they were scattered everywhere.
Eric Hoffer apparently had a collection of quotes which he kept on index cards in boxes.
Potentially mentioned in one of his biographies. Possibly:<br /> - American Iconoclast: The Life and Times of Eric Hoffer by Tom Shachtman https://www.amazon.com/American-Iconoclast-Life-Times-Hoffer/dp/1933435380<br /> - Eric Hoffer: The Longshoreman Philosopher by Tom Bethell https://www.amazon.com/Eric-Hoffer-Longshoreman-Philosopher-Institution/dp/0817914153
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alexandrianpl.org alexandrianpl.org
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https://alexandrianpl.org/comfort-cabinet/
A library has repurposed their library card catalogs as a comfort cabinet to provide their community with necessities like toothbrushes, combs, band aids, socks, etc.
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www.nerosnotes.co.uk www.nerosnotes.co.uk
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https://www.nerosnotes.co.uk/collections/foglietto
Looks sort of similar to Ugmonk's offerings...
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www.reddit.com www.reddit.com
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Why is the index card half full?
reply to u/ManuelRodriguez331 at https://www.reddit.com/r/Zettelkasten/comments/15ehcy5/why_is_the_index_card_half_full/
There has been debate about the length of notes on slips since the invention of slips and it shows no signs of coming to broad consensus other than everyone will have their personal opinion.
If you feel that A6 is is too big then go down a step in size to A7. One of the benefits of the DIN A standard is that you can take the next larger card size and fold it exactly in half to have the next size smaller. This makes it easier to scale up the size of your cards if you prefer most of them to be smaller to save space, just take care not to allow larger folded cards to "taco" smaller cards in a way they're likely to get lost. If you really needed more space, you could easily use an A1 or A2 and fold it down to fit inside of your collection! (Sadly 4x6 and 3x5 cards don't have this affordance.)
Fortunately there are a variety of available sizes, so you can choose what works best for yourself. Historically some chose large 5x8", 6x9", or even larger "slips". Some have also used different sizes for different functions. For example some use 3x5 for bibliographic cards and 4x6 for day-to-day ideas. I've seen stacked wooden card catalog furniture that had space for 3x5, 4x6, and 8.5x11 in separate drawers within the same cabinet. Some manufacturers even made their furniture modular to make this sort of mixed use even easier.
One of the broadly used pieces of advice that does go back centuries is to use "cards of the same size" (within a particular use case). This consensus is arrived at to help users from losing smaller cards between larger/taller cards. Cards of varying sizes, even small ones, are also much more difficult to sort through. Slight of hand magicians will be aware of the fact that shaving small fractions of length off of playing cards is an easy way of not only marking them, but of executing a variety of clever shuffling illusions as well as finding some of them very quickly by feel behind the back. Analog zettelkasten users will only discover that smaller, shorter cards are nearly guaranteed to become lost among the taller cards. It's for this reason that I would never recommend one to mix 4x6, A6, or even the very closely cut Exacompta Bristol cards, which are neither 4x6 nor A6!
I once took digital notes and printed them on paper and then cut them up to fit the size of the individual notes to save on space and paper. I can report that doing this was a painfully miserable experience and positively would NOT recommend doing this for smaller projects much less lifelong ones. Perhaps this could be the sort of chaos someone out there might actually manage to thrive within, but I suspect it would be a very rare individual.
As for digital spacing, you may win out a bit here for "saving" paper space, but you're also still spending on storage costs in electronic formatting which historically doesn't have the longevity of physical formats. Digital also doesn't offer the ease of use of laying cards out on a desktop and very quickly reordering them for subsequent uses.
There are always tradeoffs, one just need be aware of them to guide choices for either how they want to work or how they might work best.
Personally, I use 4x6" cards because I often write longer paragraphs on them. Through experimentation I found that I would end up using two or more 3x5 cards more often than I would have had mostly blank 4x6 cards and used that to help drive my choice. I also find myself revisiting old cards and adding to them (short follow ups, links to other cards, or other metadata) and 3x5 wouldn't allow that as easily.
As ever, YMMV...
See also: [[note lengths]] and/or [[note size]].
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- Jul 2023
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Isn’t it too much time and energy consuming? I’m not provoking, I’m genuine.
reply to IvanCyb at https://www.reddit.com/r/antinet/comments/1587onp/comment/jt8zbu4/?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=web2x&context=3 Asking broadly about indexing methods in zettelkasten
When you begin you'll find yourself creating lots of index entries to start, in part because you have none, but you'll find with time that you need to do less and less because index entries already exist for most of what you would add. More importantly most of the entries you might consider duplicating are likely to be very near cards that already have those index entries.
As an example if you have twenty cards on cultural anthropology, the first one will be indexed with "cultural anthropology" to give you a pointer of where to start. Then when you need to add a new card to that section, you'll look up "cultural anthropology" and skim through what you've got to find the closest related card and place it. You likely won't need to create a new index entry for it at all.
But for argument's sake, let's say you intend to do some work at the intersection of "cultural anthropology" and "writing" and this card is also about "writing". Then you might want to add an index entry for "writing" from which you'll branch off in the future. This will tend to keep your index very sparse. As an example you can look at Niklas Luhmann's digitized collection to notice that he spent his career in the area of "sociology" but there are only just a few pointers from his index into his collection under that keyword. If he had tagged every single card related to "sociology" as "sociology" in his index, the index entry for it would have been wholly unusable in just a few months. Broadly speaking his entire zettelkasten is about sociology, so you need to delve a few layers in and see which subtopics, sub-subtopics, sub-sub-subtopics, etc. exist. As you go deeper into specific topics you'll notice that you branch down and out into more specific subareas as you begin to cover all the bases within that topic. If you like, for fun, you can see this happening in my digital zettelkasten on the topic of "zettelkasten" at https://hypothes.is/users/chrisaldrich?q=tag%3A%22zettelkasten%22. The tool only shows the top 50 tags for that subject in the side bar, but you can slowly dig down into subtopics to see what they look like and a bit of how they begin to overlap.
Incidentally, this is one of the problems with those who tag everything with top level topic headings in digital contexts—you do a search for something important and find so much that it becomes a useless task to try to sift through it all. As a result, users need better tools to give them the ability to do more fine-grained searching, filtering, and methods of discovery.
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www.facebook.com www.facebook.com
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$1,200 for 60 drawer library card catalog in wood. No brand listed. $20/drawer.
Sold, but for unknown amount in July 2023.
looked like a single piece though may have been two sections of 6 x 5 with a three pull writing section on a small pedestal and a top.
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But I would do less than justice to Mr. Adler's achieve-ment if I left the matter there. The Syntopicon is, in additionto all this, and in addition to being a monument to the indus-try, devotion, and intelligence of Mr. Adler and his staff, astep forward in the thought of the West. It indicates wherewe are: where the agreements and disagreements lie; wherethe problems are; where the work has to be done. It thushelps to keep us from wasting our time through misunder-standing and points to the issues that must be attacked.When the history of the intellectual life of this century iswritten, the Syntopicon will be regarded as one of the land-marks in it.
p xxvi
Hutchins closes his preface to his grand project with Mortimer J. Adler by giving pride of place to Adler's Syntopicon.
Adler's Syntopicon isn't just an index compiled into two books which were volumes 2 and 3 of The Great Books of the Western World, it's physically a topically indexed card index of data (a grand zettelkasten surveying Western culture if you will). It's value to readers and users is immeasurable and it stands as a fascinating example of what a well-constructed card index might allow one to do even when they don't have their own yet.
Adler spoke of practicing syntopical reading, but anyone who compiles their own card index (in either analog or digital form) will realize the ultimate value in creating their own syntopical writing or what Robert Hutchins calls participating in "The Great Conversation" across twenty-five centuries of documented human communication.
See also: https://hypothes.is/a/WF4THtUNEe2dZTdlQCbmXw
The way Hutchins presents the idea of "Adler's achievement" here seems to indicate that Hutchins didn't have a direct hand in compiling or working on it directly.
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www.reddit.com www.reddit.com
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Converting Commonplace Books? .t3_14v2ohz._2FCtq-QzlfuN-SwVMUZMM3 { --postTitle-VisitedLinkColor: #9b9b9b; --postTitleLink-VisitedLinkColor: #9b9b9b; --postBodyLink-VisitedLinkColor: #989898; }
reply to u/ihaveascone at https://www.reddit.com/r/Zettelkasten/comments/14v2ohz/converting_commonplace_books/
Don't convert unless you absolutely need to, it will be a lot of soul-crushing make work. Since some of your practice already looks like Ross Ashby's system, why not just continue what you've been doing all along and start a physical index card-based index for your commonplaces? (As opposed to a more classical Lockian index.) As you browse your commonplaces create index cards for topics you find and write down the associated book/page numbers. Over time you'll more quickly make your commonplace books more valuable while still continuing on as you always have without skipping much a beat or attempting to convert over your entire system. Alternately you could do a paper notebook with a digital index too. I came across https://www.indxd.ink, a digital, web-based index tool for your analog notebooks. Ostensibly allows one to digitally index their paper notebooks (page numbers optional). It emails you weekly text updates, so you've got a back up of your data if the site/service disappears. This could potentially be used by those who have analog commonplace/zettelkasten practices, but want the digital search and some back up of their system.
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www.flickr.com www.flickr.com
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https://www.flickr.com/photos/hawkexpress/194730263
Hawk Sugano used a Correct Indexcard Dock (C-153DF) box for some of his index card practice.
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www.reddit.com www.reddit.com
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"I keep a dated diary of sorts on index cards, though they rarely go past one card a day."This is something I haven't heard of before. So, you journal/diary on index cards, one per day?
reply to u/taurusnoises (Bob Doto) at tk
Yep, for almost a full year now on 4x6" index cards. (Receipts for the kids: https://boffosocko.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/wp-1688411021709-scaled.jpg)
Previously I'd used a Hobonichi Cousin (page per day) journal for this. (Perhaps I should have stayed with the A6 size instead of the larger A5 for consistency?) Decades ago (around 1988ish?) I had started using a 2 page per day DayTimer pocket planners (essentially pre-printed/timed index cards spiral bound into monthly booklets which they actually shipped in index card-like plastic boxes for storage/archival purposes). Technically I've been doing a version of this for a really long time in one form or another.
It generally includes a schedule, to do lists (bullet journal style), and various fleeting notes/journaling similar to the older Memindex format, just done on larger cards for extra space. I generally either fold them in half for pocket storage for the day or carry about in groups for the coming week(s) when I'm away from my desk for extended periods (also with custom blank index card notebooks/pads).
I won't go into the fact that in the 90's I had a 5,000+ person rolodex... or an index card (in the entertainment they called them buck slips) with the phone numbers and names of \~100 people I dealt with regularly when early brick cell phones didn't have great (or any) storage/functionality.
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reply to Bob Doto at https://www.reddit.com/r/Zettelkasten/comments/14lcb4z/using_diaries_and_journals_as_source_material_for/
Ross Ashby kept his notes in notebooks/journals but he did cross-index them by topic using index cards. Rather than reference them by notebook (name/title/date) and page number, he kept a set of handwritten running page numbers across the entirety of his notebooks, so instead of Notebook 15 page 55, 1952 he'd simply write "3786" for page 3786. This can be seen on his index card for the indexed word "determinate" as an example.
For other examples, see: http://www.rossashby.info/journal/index/index.html
My own notebooks are usually titled by year and date spans along with page numbers, so I'll use those roughly as Bob describes. This has made it much easier to not need to move all my older notes into a card-based system, but still make them useable and referenceable.
For those with more explicit journaling, diary, or other writing habits, Ralph Waldo Emmerson makes an interesting example of practice as he maintained at least two commonplace books (a poetry-specific one and a general one) as well as a large set of writing journals where he experimented with writing before later publishing his work. Since there are extant (digitized and published copies) and large bodies of scholarship around them, they make an interesting case study of how his process worked and how others might imitate it.
On the diary front, of the historical examples I've seen floating around, only Roland Barthes had a significant practice of keeping his "diary" in index card form, a portion of which was published on October 12, 2010. Mourning Diary is a collection published for the first time from Roland Barthes' 330 index cards focusing on his mourning following the death of his mother in 1977.
Not as extensive, Vladimir Nabokov recorded a "diary" of sixty-four dreams on 118 index cards beginning on October 14, 1964 as an experiment. He was following the instructions of John Dunne, a British philosopher, in An Experiment with Time. The results were published by Princeton University Press in Insomniac Dreams: Experiments with Time by Vladimir Nabokov which was edited by Gennady Barabtarlo.
Presumably if one keeps a diary or journal in index card form in chronological order, they can simply reference it by date and either time or card X of Y, if there are multiple card entries for a single day. I keep a dated diary of sorts on index cards, though they rarely go past one card a day.
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writing.bobdoto.computer writing.bobdoto.computer
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anachronistic zettelkasten
Does he really mean anachronistic here? It doesn't seem to suit the context. While he seems to be comparing the time-ordered nature of a journal versus the non-time ordered structure of a zettelkasten, I can't help but read it from the alternate, and more common (and also pejorative) perspective. Seems odd to call it out specifically as it's not an issue with respect to any other of the more commonly used sources (books, journal articles, magazines, newspapers.)
Might have been better to use anachronistic to modify zettel rather than zettelkasten which is a collective noun--that's the dissonance here for me.
Compare those, like Roland Barthes, who used a slip box as a diary, which would have been chronological. I've also got a chronological section of my slip box.
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www.reddit.com www.reddit.com
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I tried Amazon too. Try search for Badge holder tray or Badge organiser and probably you can find something similar.
Amazon has badge holder trays/organizers that can be used similarly to index card bleachers.
Try: https://www.amazon.com/s?k=Badge+holder+organizer&crid=10DA7CASQVMB4&sprefix=badge+holder+organizer
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item.taobao.com item.taobao.com
- Jun 2023
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comedycenter.org comedycenter.org
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via Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work.(Break Thru Films/IFC, 2010)
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National Comedy Center Becomes Home to Joan Rivers’ Career Archive<br /> by National Comedy Center
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comedycenter.org comedycenter.org
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564 jokes are filed under PARENTS HATED ME (see: NOT WANTED) and over 300 within the STEWARDESSES category.
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a file cabinet containing over 65,000 original jokes spanning from the start of her career in the 1950s to 2014 when she passed away.
The NY Times blew her obituary date of 2014 when they published material based on this press release.
Joan Rivers card index of jokes comprised 65,000 cards spanning the start of her career in the 1950s to 2014, when she passed away.
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https://www.ebay.com/itm/354851703411
2 drawer Library Bureau catalog listed for $199, but sold for a lower amount.
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https://www.ebay.com/itm/364287692051
60 drawer cabinet listed for auction on eBay starting at $800 with a buy now price of $1,800 buy now price. Listed in June and unsold and relisted. Unknown brand, though it looks like late 60/early 70s Remington-Rand.
$13/drawer at the low end going up to $30/drawer.
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Annotators
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www.ebay.com www.ebay.com
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https://www.ebay.com/itm/266292541330
Gaylord Bros. 30 drawer card catalog (6 x 5 configuration) with somewhat mismatched table listed for 999.99 on Ebay. This has been on the market for about 2 months and relisted for bid at least 4 times.
$33.33/drawer
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www.facebook.com www.facebook.com
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https://www.facebook.com/marketplace/item/961017808666751/
60 drawer cabinet in two sections with three pull out writing surfaces, and table. Listed for $1,700, took over a month to sell and likely not for listing price.
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www.imdb.com www.imdb.com
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https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1568150/
Based on having watched the documentary Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work and the depictions of Rivers' card index in the film and using her hands and a lateral file for scale, her cards seem to have been 3 x 5" index cards.
cross reference: https://hypothes.is/a/RvLTZjCQEe2uuaNwpTBNuA
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www.nytimes.com www.nytimes.com
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Zinoman, Jason. “A ‘Crown Jewel of Comedy’: The Joan Rivers Card Catalog of Jokes Finds a Home.” The New York Times, June 8, 2023, sec. Arts. https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/08/arts/television/joan-rivers-archive.html.
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“And yeah, it goes on, and on, and on. And one day, we’re going to get a little intern who thinks they’re in show business and is going to sit and put each and every one of these cards onto a computer so that when I’m in England and I need a joke about doctors, I can just go into my computer and come up with a — oh, this is a tramp. This tramp donated all her organs for transplants, which should make the recipients happy because her body has never rejected anything. [LAUGHS]: So. But it just goes on, and on, and on. These are just jokes over the years, years, and years, and years of jokes. And when I die, I can sell this to some lucky, lucky comedian who will then, if they’re smart, have enough to keep them going for their whole life.”
standing in front of her card index for comedy, built into a wall of other files.
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In a scene from the documentary “Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work,” the comedian explains how she kept a record of her jokes and cross-indexed them.CreditCredit...Break Thru Films/IFC
In the documentary Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work, she explains how she kept and filed records of her jokes.
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Example typewritten jokes from Joan Rivers' card index of comedy:
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Rivers, who wrote gags at all hours, paid close attention to setups and punchlines, typing them up and cross-referencing them by categories like “Parents hated me” or “Las Vegas” or “No sex appeal.” The largest subject area is “Tramp,” which includes 1,756 jokes.
Joan Rivers card index of jokes is categorized by topical headings like "Parents hated me", "Las Vegas", and "No sex appeal". The largest subject category in her collection was "Tramp" with 1,756 jokes.
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In Carlin’s archives, by contrast, the jokes were “mainly scraps of paper organized into Ziploc baggies then put into a folder by topic.”
quote by Journey Gunderson, the executive director of the National Comedy Center
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When it comes to the Joan Rivers joke collection, “I don’t know that another exists that is nearly as vast,” Gunderson said.
Ignoring Bob Hope's collection or possibly that by Sid Caesar.
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Joan Rivers’s card catalog of jokes and include material covering a vast swath of comedy history, from the 1950s to 2015.
Joan Rivers card index of jokes spans material covering the 1950s to 2015.
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Instead, Rivers is donating the extensive collection to the National Comedy Center, the high-tech museum in Jamestown, N.Y., joining the archives of A-list comics like George Carlin and Carl Reiner. The fact that the jokes will be accessible is only one of the reasons for Melissa Rivers’s decision.
To avoid the Raiders of the Lost Ark problem, Melissa Rivers donated her mother's joke collection to the National Comedy Center so it would be on display and accessible. The New York-based museum is also home to the archives of George Carlin and Carl Reiner.
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Take a look at some of the artifacts from her archive, which includes 65,000 cross-referenced gags and is headed to the National Comedy Center.
Joan Rivers' card catalog of ~65,000 cross referenced jokes will be housed at the National Comedy Center, a museum in Jamestown, NY.
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- documentaries
- XX
- career
- George Carlin's zettelkasten
- Carl Reiner
- Raiders of the Lost Ark problem
- old age
- National Comedy Center
- Joan Rivers
- Jamestown NY
- read
- fashion
- quotes
- Raiders of the Lost Ark
- George Carlin
- topical headings
- joke collections
- card index for comedy
- no sex appeal
- jokes
- Journey Gunderson
- Bob Hope
- sex
- Melissa Rivers
- Ziploc bags
- Sid Caesar
- personal papers
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press.princeton.edu press.princeton.edu
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On October 14, 1964, Vladimir Nabokov, a lifelong insomniac, began a curious experiment. Over the next eighty days, immediately upon waking, he wrote down his dreams, following the instructions he found in An Experiment with Time by the British philosopher John Dunne. The purpose was to test the theory that time may go in reverse, so that, paradoxically, a later event may generate an earlier dream. The result—published here for the first time—is a fascinating diary in which Nabokov recorded sixty-four dreams (and subsequent daytime episodes) on 118 index cards, which afford a rare glimpse of the artist at his most private.
Vladimir Nabokov recorded sixty-four dreams on 118 index cards beginning on October 14, 1964 as an experiment. He was following the instructions of John Dunne, a British philosopher, in An Experiment with Time. The results were published by Princeton University Press in Insomniac Dreams: Experiments with Time by Vladimir Nabokov which was edited by Gennady Barabtarlo.
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www.youtube.com www.youtube.com
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Zettelkasten Lesson Plan Intro
Not much here beyond his longer article, though it does have a sample format for zettel which can be useful for those starting out.
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- May 2023
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www.nicksantalucia.com www.nicksantalucia.com
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Santalucia, Nick. “The Zettelkasten in the Secondary Classroom.” Blog, July 6, 2021. https://www.nicksantalucia.com/blog/the-zettelkasten-in-the-secondary-classroom-k12.
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Hyper-zettelkastenStudents stick all of their zettels on the walls with sticky tack or tape (be sure students initial or mark their zettels before doing this).Then, students walk around the room and search for connections and create original ideas using those connections.Students physically attach those zettels with string (like a conspiracy theorist would) and stick a zettel on the string explaining the connection.
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Local file Local file
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Card Grip. (Right and Left). Hold cards firmly against the platen.
p 5
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ObsidianI am an academic, so a critic might say that intellectual masturbation is kind of my job description. That said, yes, I am using my ZK all the time to create stuff. Oftentimes, "stuff" may be less tangible things like inspiration for a discussion with my team or with students. But my ZK also helps me tremendously for writing papers and grant proposals because now a lot of my thinking can happen before I start writing. More precisely, of course I had done a lot of thinking even before I ever used a ZK, but now I can record, retrieve, and elaborate these thoughts easily so that they accumulate over time to something bigger. Now, writing a paper or grant proposal often comes down to concatenating a bunch of notes. Ok, maybe that's a bit exaggerated, it still does take some extra editing, but you catch my drift.It took me some experimenting but now I can't imagine going back to my pre-Zettelkasten way of working.
reply to u/enabeh at https://www.reddit.com/r/Zettelkasten/comments/13s6dsg/comment/jluovm9/?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=web2x&context=3
If you're curious, I've been collecting examples of teachers/professors who used their zettelkasten for teaching: https://hypothes.is/users/chrisaldrich?q=tag%3A%27card+index+for+teaching%27 Examples include Mario Bunge, Frederic L. Paxson, Gotthard Deutsch, Roland Barthes, and Joachim Jungius. In more recent contexts, I've seen Dan Allosso (aka u/danallosso), Mark Robertson (aka calhistorian u/calhistorian), and Sean Graham (https://electricarchaeology.ca/) using zettelkasten or linked notes using Obsidian, Roam, etc. for teaching. Perhaps we should get the group together to trade stories? Ping me with an email if you're interested.
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framework for making claims with evidence. The simplest of which, which is what I use, is Claim-Evidence-Reasoning (CER). Students are taught to state their claim (The theme of the story is X), support it with evidence (Readers can infer this through the story's plot, particularly...), and explain their reasoning (Because the character's action result in X, ...) Another great framework is The Writing Revolution/The Hochman Method's "single paragraph outline". Students need to be taught that these are the units of thought -- the most basic forms of an argument. And, even before this, they need to know that a sentence is the form of an idea.
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www.youtube.com www.youtube.com
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dU7efgGEOgk
I wish he'd gotten into more of the detail of the research and index card making here as that's where most of the work lies. He does show some of his process of laying out and organizing the cards into some sort of sections using 1/3 cut tabbed cards. This is where his system diverges wildly from Luhmann's. He's now got to go through all the cards and do some additional re-reading and organizational work to put them into some sort of order. Luhmann did this as he went linking ideas and organizing them up front. This upfront work makes the back side of laying things out and writing/editing so much easier. It likely also makes one more creative as one is regularly revisiting ideas, juxtaposing them, and potentially generating new ones along the way rather than waiting until the organization stage to have some of this new material "fall out".
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www.levenger.com www.levenger.com
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Levenger sells a line of various "pocket briefcases" which include space for 3 x 5" index card "ticklers" which are similar in form to the old Memindex.
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www.levenger.com www.levenger.com
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- Set of 52 weekly 3 x 5 accordion tri-folded cards - Undated planner with ruled lines and shaded blank areas for writing appointments, notes or lists on each day of the week - Thick and substantial 250-gsm card stock - Friendly to all types of ink - Unfolded, 9W x 5H
A 9 x 5" card that folds in three to make a 3 x 5" card for planning out one's entire week.
This is quite clever with respect the space of cards like Analog and 3x5 Life.
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I get by when I work by accumulating notes—a bit about everything, ideas cap-tured on the fly, summaries of what I have read, references, quotations . . . Andwhen I want to start a project, I pull a packet of notes out of their pigeonhole anddeal them out like a deck of cards. This kind of operation, where chance plays arole, helps me revive my failing memory.16
via: Didier Eribon, Conversations with Claude Lévi-Strauss (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991), vii–viii; Claude Lévi-Strauss, Structural Anthropology (New York: Basic Books, 1963), 129f.
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In a note, he dryly remarks: “Appearanceof the card index and constitution of the human sciences: another invention the historianshave celebrated little”.7
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Discussing the documentary system of surveillance, Foucault points toa “partly official, partly secret hierarchy” in Paris that had been using a card index to managedata on suspects and criminals at least since 1833.
source apparently from: “Apparition de la fiche et constitution des sciences humaines: encore une invention que les historiens célèbrent peu.” Michel Foucault, Surveillir et punir. Naissance de la prison (Paris: Gallimard, 1975), 287, referring to A. Bonneville, De la recidive (Paris, 1844), 92–93.
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British historian of science, StaffanMueller-Wille at the Centre for Medical History at the University of Exeter, recently claimedthat Swedish natural scientist Carl Linnaeus (1707–1778), the father of modern taxonomy,had “invented” the card index to manage his information storage and retrieval.
How can Linnaeus (1707-1778) be said to have invented the card index or the index card when there are systems that predate him including Vincent Placcius and Leibnitz?
Linnaeus' version were all of a standard size at least. Would this have been a shift in the definition or did others have and recommend "cards of equal size" before this?
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CD-ROM interactive content and games like Myst (1993)
The 1993 game Myst, available on CD-ROM, had a card index like format.
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yet a certaintype of hipster will proudly own a piece of furniture originally designed for a library cardcatalog
Hipster here with respect to the card catalog as furniture without mention of the "hipster PDA".
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PAPER SLIPSThe Long Reign of theIndex Card and Card CatalogPeter Krapp
Krapp, Peter. “Paper Slips: The Long Reign of the Index Card and Card Catalog.” In The Routledge Companion to Media Technology and Obsolescence, edited by Mark J. P. Wolf. Routledge, 2019.
Tags
- intellectual history
- invention of the index card
- combinatorial creativity
- Michel Foucault
- card catalogs
- playing cards
- card index as memory
- Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz
- Vincentius Placcius
- hipsters
- Myst (game)
- card index for gaming
- 1833
- quotes
- card index as database
- games
- references
- CD-ROM
- open questions
- index cards
- Claude Lévi-Strauss
- card index
- Staffan Mueller-Wille
- Carl Linnaeus
- note taking affordances
- cards of equal size
- Hipster PDA
- obsolescence
- card index for crime
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www.3x5life.com www.3x5life.com
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What's included in the 3x5 Life System: 6 months of Daily cards **Schedule version** (186 cards) Monthly/Year Goal Cards (1 year of cards) Habit Tracker Cards (1 year of cards) Weekly Review Cards (1 year of cards) Storage Box with 3x5 logo on lid Monthly dividers to keep your storage box organized Mobile Phone Sleeve Stainless Steel Stand MINI COURSE: Outlining how best to utilize the system
via: https://www.3x5life.com/collections/frontpage/products/3x5-life-system-with-mini-course
They apparently offer a mini course outlining the system.
One wonders how much "why" they offer?
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www.3x5life.com www.3x5life.com
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Compare with other products in this category: - Analog (Jeff Sheldon productivity system) - Memindex - Bullet Journal - Frictionless Capture Cards - Pile of Index Cards
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aboard.com aboard.com
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One click to turn any web page into a card. Organize your passions.
In beta May 2023, via:
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>All right. @Aboard is in Beta. @richziade and I are to blame, and everyone else deserves true credit. Here's an animated GIF that explains the entire product. Check out https://t.co/i9RXiJLvyA, sign up, and we're waving in tons of folks every day. pic.twitter.com/7WS1OPgsHV
— Paul Ford (@ftrain) May 17, 2023
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www.reddit.com www.reddit.com
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I've been using index cards for tracking reading notes (lit or bib notes now) and I want to change this topic of index cards over to the Z system. In the past, the main section was "writing" and two subsections, "nonfiction" and "fiction". They are all how-to. I have some main notes but most are from every writing book published which I've read in the last 10 years (yep, shelves full). Approx. 3000 index cards, maybe more, with lots of sub-subsection, etc. I've been teaching writing for the last 10+ years and would love to connect the dots easier now than I have in the past. On the list, I couldn't find the recommended category to place these under. Maybe productivity is in there somewhere. I'm working on a mind map structure now. Any thoughts or advice on this? Anyone else done this?
Has your prior system not been working for you? What do you want to gain from making the change? What list are you looking at that you don't see a category? Isn't the category "writing", "fiction writing", "nonfiction writing", etc.?
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ugmonk.com ugmonk.comAnalog1
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Following a pattern seen in many modern wooden recipe card boxes to hold the current recipe one is working on, Jeff Sheldon has cut a long thin slot into his card holder to allow one to stand up today's card in the front as a means of displaying and featuring what needs to get done.
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www.kickstarter.com www.kickstarter.com
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https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/ugmonk/analog-the-simplest-productivity-system
Jeff Sheldon's Analog productivity system is a physical product consisting of a wooden tray, metal divider, 3 x 5" custom printed index cards (and refills), a felt carrier, and other accessories which functions as a minimalistic version of the old Memindex.
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https://www.etsy.com/listing/1283073189/founding-member-level-membership-museum
Museum of Tiny Things, a museum of miniatures and scenes built into a repurposed library card catalog.
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howaboutthis.substack.com howaboutthis.substack.com
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I take a lot of notes during my day job. More like a huge amount of notes. On paper. As an experiment I started using several Dingbats* notebooks during the day job to see how they would work4 for me. After about 9 weeks of trials, I learned that I could fill up a 180 page notebook in about 3 weeks, plus or minus a few days. Unfortunately, when you factor in the cost of these notebooks, that’s like spending $1 - $2 per day on notebooks. Dingbats* are lovely, durable notebooks. But my work notes are not going to be enshrined in a museum for the ages5 and until I finally get that sponsorship from Dingbats* or Leuchtuurm19176, I probably need a different solution.
Mark Dykeman indicates that at regular work, he fills up a 180 page notebook and at the relatively steep cost of notebooks, he's paying $1-2 a day for paper.
This naturally brings up the idea of what it might cost per day in index cards for some zettlers' practices. I've already got some notes on price of storage...
As a rough calculation, despite most of my note taking being done digitally, I'm going through a pack of 500 Oxford cards at $12.87 every 5 months at my current pace. This is $0.02574 per card and 5 months is roughly 150 days. My current card cost per day is: $0.02574/card * 500 cards / (150 days) = $12.78/150 days = $0.0858 per day which is far better than $2/day.
Though if I had an all-physical card habit, I would be using quite a bit more.
On July 3, 2022 I was at 10,099 annotations and today May 11, 2023 I'm at 15,259 annotations. At one annotation per card that's 5,160 cards in the span of 312 days giving me a cost of $0.02574/card * 5,160 cards / 312 days = $0.421 per day or an average of $153.75 per year averaging 6,036 cards per year.
(Note that this doesn't also include the average of three physical cards a day I'm using in addition, so the total would be slightly higher.)
Index cards are thus, quite a bit cheaper a habit than fine stationery notebooks.
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forum.eastgate.com forum.eastgate.com
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Tinderbox Meetup - Sunday, May 7, 2023 Video: Connect with Sönke Ahrens live, the author of How to Take Smart Notes
reply for Fidel at https://forum.eastgate.com/t/tinderbox-meetup-sunday-may-7-2023-video-connect-with-sonke-ahrens-live-the-author-of-how-to-take-smart-notes/6659
@fidel (I'm presuming you're the same one from the meetup on Sunday, if not perhaps someone might tag the appropriate person?), I was thinking a bit more on your question of using physical index cards for writing fiction. You might find the examples of both Vladimir Nabokov and Dustin Lance Black, a screenwriter, useful as they both use index card-based workflows.
Vladimir Nabokov died in 1977 leaving an unfinished manuscript in note card form for the novel The Original of Laura . Penguin later published the incomplete novel with in 2012 with the subtitle A Novel in Fragments . Unlike most manuscripts written or typewritten on larger paper, this one came in the form of 138 index cards. Penguin's published version recreated these cards in full-color reproductions including the smudges, scribbles, scrawlings, strikeouts, and annotations in English, French, and Russian. Perforated, one could tear the cards out of the book and reorganize in any way they saw fit or even potentially add their own cards to finish the novel that Nabokov couldn't. Taking a look at this might give you some ideas of how Nabokov worked and how you might adapt the style for yourself. Another interesting resource is this article with some photos/links about his method with respect to writing Lolita: https://www.openculture.com/2014/02/the-notecards-on-which-vladimir-nabokov-wrote-lolita.html
You might also find some useful tidbits on his writing process (Bristol cards/Exacompta anyone?) in: Gold, Herbert. “Vladimir Nabokov, The Art of Fiction No. 40.” The Paris Review, 1967. https://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/4310/the-art-of-fiction-no-40-vladimir-nabokov.
Carl Mydans photographed Nabokov while writing in September 1958 and some of those may be interesting to you as well.
Dustin Lance Black outlines his index card process in this video on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vrvawtrRxsw
If you dig around you'll also find Michael Ende and a variety of other German fiction writers who used index cards on the Zettelkasten page on Wikipedia, but I suspect most of the material on their processes are written in German.
Index cards for fiction writing may allow some writers some useful affordances/benefits. By using small atomic pieces on note cards, one can be far more focused on the idea and words immediately at hand. It's also far easier in a creative and editorial process to move pieces around experimentally.
Similarly, when facing Hemmingway's "White Bull", the size and space of an index card is fall smaller. This may have the effect that Twitter's short status updates have for writers who aren't faced with the seemingly insurmountable burden of writing a long blog post or essay in other software. They can write 280 characters and stop. Of if they feel motivated, they can continue on by adding to the prior parts of a growing thread.
However, if you can, try to use a card catalog drawer with a rod so that you don't spill all of your well-ordered cards the way the character in Robert M. Pirsig's novel Lila (1991) did.
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www.reddit.com www.reddit.com
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Note taking can also be done to create a database (a la Beatrice Webb's scientific note taking).
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www.napkin.one www.napkin.one
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Circling back around to this after a mention by Tim Bushell at Dan Allosso's Book Club this morning. Nicole van der Hoeven has been using it for a while now and has several videos.
Though called Napkin, which conjures the idea of (wastebook) notes scribbled on a napkin, is a card-based UI which has both manual and AI generated tags in a constellation-like UI. It allows creating "stacks" of notes which are savable and archivable in an outline-esque form (though the outline doesn't appear collapsible) as a means of composition.
It's got a lot of web clipper tooling for saving and some dovetails for bringing in material from Readwise, but doesn't have great data export (JSON, CSV) at the moment. (Not great here means that one probably needs to do some reasonably heavy lifting to do the back and forth with other tools and may require programming skills.)
At present, it looks like just another tool in the space but could be richer with better data dovetailing with other services.
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www.folger.edu www.folger.edu
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https://www.folger.edu/blogs/collation/the-key-to-removing-a-rod/
There are broadly five types of card catalog rod configurations: - no rod - threaded rod - friction fit rod - lift and pull rod - hidden release rod
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Pulling the rod all the way out is a rookie mistake: it’s really awkward to get it started back in again.
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micro.blog micro.blog
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For $1,900.00 ?
reply to rogerscrafford at tk
Fine furniture comes at a fine price. 🗃️🤩 I suspect that it won't sell for quite a while and one could potentially make an offer at a fraction of that to take it off their hands. It might bear considering that if one had a practice large enough to fill half or more, then that price probably wouldn't seem too steep for the long term security and value of the contents.
On a price per card of storage for some of the cheaper cardboard or metal boxes you're going to pay about $0.02-0.03 per card, but you'd need about 14 of those to equal this and those aren't always easy to stack and access regularly. With this, even at the full $1,900, you're looking at storage costs of $0.10/card, but you've got a lot more ease of use which will save you a lot of time and headache as more than adequate compensation, particularly if you're regularly using the approximately 20,400 index cards it would hold. Not everyone has the same esthetic, but I suspect that most would find that this will look a lot nicer in your office than 14 cheap cardboard boxes. That many index cards even at discount rates are going to cost you about $825 just in cards much less beautiful, convenient, and highly usable storage.
Even for some of the more prolific zettelkasten users, this sort of storage is about 20 years of use and if you compare it with $96/year for Notion or $130/year for Evernote, you're probably on par for cost either way, but at least with the wooden option, you don't have to worry about your note storage provider going out of business a few years down the line. Even if you go the "free" Obsidian route, with computers/storage/backups over time, you're probably not going to come out ahead in the long run. It's not all apples to apples comparison and there are differences in some of the affordances, but on balance and put into some perspective, it's probably not the steep investment it may seem.
And as an added bonus, while you're slowly filling up drawers, as a writer you might appreciate the slowly decreasing wine/whiskey bottle storage over time? A 5 x 8 drawer ought to fit three bottles of wine or as many fifths of Scotch. It'll definitely accommodate a couple of magnums of Jack Daniels. 🥃🍸🍷My experience also tells me that an old fashioned glass can make a convenient following block in card index boxes.
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- Apr 2023
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en.wikipedia.org en.wikipedia.org
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Catalog cards were 2 by 5 inches (5 cm × 13 cm); the Harvard College size.
Early library card catalogs used cards that were 2 x 5" cards, the Harvard College size, before the standardization of 3 x 5" index cards.
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www.librarybureausteel.com www.librarybureausteel.com
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https://www.librarybureausteel.com/index.html
Library Bureau got spun off of Remington Rand and still sells library products in 2023, though primarily shelving units now. It doesn't list any card catalogs as part of its offerings.
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Memindex Phondex Office Phone Number Organizer Styrene NOS
Memindex, Inc. of Rochester, NY manufactured a plastic "Phonedex" in the mid-20th century. It was made of Dow Chemical Styrene and sat underneath a standard rotary dial telephone and contained index cards with one's lists of phone numbers on them.
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www.kanopy.com www.kanopy.com
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44:19 - [Claudia] The classification is anything but indifferent.44:24 The manner of shelving the books44:26 is meant to impart certain suggestions to the reader,44:30 who, looking on the shelves for one book,44:33 is attracted by the kindred ones next to it,44:36 glances at the sections above and below,44:39 and finds himself involved in a new trend of thought44:43 which may lend to additional interests44:46 to the one he was pursuing.
The classification is anything but indifferent. The manner of shelving the books is meant to impart certain suggestions to the reader, who, looking on the shelves for one book, is attracted by the kindred ones next to it, glances at the sections above and below, and finds himself involved in a new trend of thought which may lend to additional interests to the one he was pursuing.<br /> —Claudia Wedepohl on the design of Warburg's library, [00:44:19] in Aby Warburg: Metamorphosis and Memory
Provides a similar sort of description of the push towards serendipity and discovery found in one's zettelkasten as well as that in Melvil Dewey's library classification and arrangements.
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www.youtube.com www.youtube.com
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Also I really want to see the someone using their zettlekasten for managing knowledge about stuff not zettlekasten related. Mine mainly revolves about artistic appretiation, creativity and art fundamentals. I've been wanting to make a video series about it, just havent find the time. Your videos serve much as inspiration and as example of how may I go about it.
reply to Sara Martínez at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wQPvrcksjUA&lc=UgzbdJ1cdxkjnN0DBOl4AaABAg
Sara, here are some creative/art-related examples that might help:<br /> Dancer/Choreographer Twyla Tharp used a slightly modified slip box method that included much more than notes on cards for her dance-related work. She describes the process well in chapter 6 of her book "The Creative Habit: Learn It and Use It for Life".
If you're into art and image-based work, Aby Warburg had a zettelkasten with images. Search for details on his "Mnemosyne Atlas" at The Warburg Institute at the School of Advanced Study University of London which has some material you may appreciate.
Product designer khimtan has a visual zettelkasten practice you can find examples of on Reddit in the "Antinet" sub.
A variety of comedians like Phyllis Diller, Joan Rivers, Bob Hope, and George Carlin had zettelkasten practices for their comedy work.
Eminem has a fantastic, but tremendously simple zettelkasten for songwriting. Taylor Swift has a somewhat similar digital version which she has talked about using, though she doesn't use the word zettelkasten to describe it.
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www.youtube.com www.youtube.com
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https://youtu.be/UTtDb73NkNM?t=49
CBS has a card index with an index card indicating that Morley Safer brought an Olivetti typewriter to the office.
Whose card index was this? What other purpose did it serve?
Tags
Annotators
URL
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zettelkasten.de zettelkasten.de
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You should only write on the front side of the paper slips, so it is possible to read the note during searches without the need to take it out.
Luhmann mentions that he only wrote on one side so that he didn't need to physically remove notes from the box when searching it. There is a level of lost productivity if one needs to physically remove a card to read it and then replace it; this lost productivity is magnified if one uses their slip box regularly over the span of many years.
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There are two ways for a communication system to maintain its integrity over long periods of time: you need to decide for either highly technical specialisation, or for a setup that incorporates coincidence and ad hoc generated information. Translated to note collections: you can choose a setup categorized by topics, or an open one. We chose the latter and, after 26 successful years with only occasionally difficult teamwork, we can report that this way is successful – or at least possible.
Luhmann indicates that there are different methods for keeping note collections and specifically mentions categorizing things by topics first. It's only after this that he mentions his own "open" system as being a possible or successful one.
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- Mar 2023
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www.3m.co.uk www.3m.co.uk
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"The Scrum method" described here, similar to the Kanban method, the Memindex method, tickler systems, or other card index as productivity systems, seems to be a productized name for selling Post-it Notes.
Scrum method consists of a project broken down into "story" rows with "to do" items in columns which progress along to "in process", "to verify", and finally "done".
Other productized names (particular to the note taking space): Antinet zettelkasten, Linking Your Thinking, Second Brain, etc.
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hyperallergic.com hyperallergic.com
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The Lost Art of Library Card Catalogues<br /> by Claire Voon
Broadly a synopsis/advertisement for The Card Catalog: Books, Cards, and Literary Treasures (Chronicle, 2017), which I've put on my to read list.
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www.insidehighered.com www.insidehighered.com
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In the fall of 2015, she assigned students to write chapter introductions and translate some texts into modern English.
Perhaps of interest here, would not be a specific OER text, but an OER zettelkasten or card index that indexes a variety of potential public domain or open resources, articles, pieces, primary documents, or other short readings which could then be aggregated and tagged to allow for a teacher or student to create their own personalized OER text for a particular area of work.
If done well, a professor might then pick and choose from a wide variety of resources to build their own reader to highlight or supplement the material they're teaching. This could allow a wider variety of thinking and interlinking of ideas. With such a regiment, teachers are less likely to become bored with their material and might help to actively create new ideas and research lines as they teach.
Students could then be tasked with and guided to creating a level of cohesiveness to their readings as they progress rather than being served up a pre-prepared meal with a layer of preconceived notions and frameworks imposed upon the text by a single voice.
This could encourage students to develop their own voices as well as to look at materials more critically as they proceed rather than being spoon fed calcified ideas.
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www.youtube.com www.youtube.com
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Basic statistics regarding the TLL: - ancient Latin vocabulary words: ca. 55,000 words - 10,000,000 slips - ca. 6,500 boxes - ca. 1,500 slips per box - library 32,000 volumes - contributors: 375 scholars from 20 different countries - 12 Indo-European specalists - 8 Romance specialists - 100 proof-readers - ca. 44,000 words published - published content: 70% of the entire vocabulary - print run: 1,350 - Publisher: consortium of 35 academies from 27 countries on 5 continents
Longest remaining words: - non / 37 boxes of ca 55,500 slips - qui, quae, quod / 65 boxes of ca. 96,000 slips - sum, esse, fui / 54.5 boxes of ca. 81,750 slips - ut / 35 boxes of ca 52,500 slips
Note that some of these words have individual zettelkasten for themselves approaching the size of some of the largest personal collections we know about!
[18:51]
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tllpod.podbean.com tllpod.podbean.com
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Based on the history and usage of horreum here in this first episode of the Thesaurus Linguae Latinae podcast, a project featuring a 10+ million slip zettelkasten at its core, I can't help but think that not only is the word ever so apropos for an introduction, but it does quite make an excellent word for translating the idea of card index in English or Zettelkasten from German into Latin.
My horreum is a storehouse for my thoughts and ideas which nourishes my desire to discover and build upon my knowledge.
This seems to be just the sort of thing that Jeremy Cherfas might appreciate on multiple levels.
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thesaurus.badw.de thesaurus.badw.de
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Project: Thesaurus linguae Latinae<br /> from Bayerische Akademie der Wissenschaften
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scienceblog.com scienceblog.com
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The advent of computer technology facilitated the assembly of the Demotic Dictionary, which unlike its older sister, the Chicago Assyrian Dictionary, could be organized electronically rather than on index cards.
The Chicago Demotic Dictionary compiled by the Oriental Institute at the University of Chicago was facilitated by computers compared with the Chicago Assyrian Dictionary which relied on index cards.
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en.wikipedia.org en.wikipedia.org
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The Wörterbuch der ägyptischen Sprache was an international collaborative zettelkasten project begun in 1897 and finally published as five volumes in 1926.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W%C3%B6rterbuch_der_%C3%A4gyptischen_Sprache
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web.archive.org web.archive.org
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Die schiere Menge sprengt die Möglichkeiten der Buchpublikation, die komplexe, vieldimensionale Struktur einer vernetzten Informationsbasis ist im Druck nicht nachzubilden, und schließlich fügt sich die Dynamik eines stetig wachsenden und auch stetig zu korrigierenden Materials nicht in den starren Rhythmus der Buchproduktion, in der jede erweiterte und korrigierte Neuauflage mit unübersehbarem Aufwand verbunden ist. Eine Buchpublikation könnte stets nur die Momentaufnahme einer solchen Datenbank, reduziert auf eine bestimmte Perspektive, bieten. Auch das kann hin und wieder sehr nützlich sein, aber dadurch wird das Problem der Publikation des Gesamtmaterials nicht gelöst.
Google translation:
The sheer quantity exceeds the possibilities of book publication, the complex, multidimensional structure of a networked information base cannot be reproduced in print, and finally the dynamic of a constantly growing and constantly correcting material does not fit into the rigid rhythm of book production, in which each expanded and corrected new edition is associated with an incalculable amount of effort. A book publication could only offer a snapshot of such a database, reduced to a specific perspective. This too can be very useful from time to time, but it does not solve the problem of publishing the entire material.
While the writing criticism of "dumping out one's zettelkasten" into a paper, journal article, chapter, book, etc. has been reasonably frequent in the 20th century, often as a means of attempting to create a linear book-bound context in a local neighborhood of ideas, are there other more complex networks of ideas which we're not communicating because they don't neatly fit into linear narrative forms? Is it possible that there is a non-linear form(s) based on network theory in which more complex ideas ought to better be embedded for understanding?
Some of Niklas Luhmann's writing may show some of this complexity and local or even regional circularity, but perhaps it's a necessary means of communication to get these ideas across as they can't be placed into linear forms.
One can analogize this to Lie groups and algebras in which our reading and thinking experiences are limited only to local regions which appear on smaller scales to be Euclidean, when, in fact, looking at larger portions of the region become dramatically non-Euclidean. How are we to appropriately relate these more complex ideas?
What are the second and third order effects of this phenomenon?
An example of this sort of non-linear examination can be seen in attempting to translate the complexity inherent in the Wb (Wörterbuch der ägyptischen Sprache) into a simple, linear dictionary of the Egyptian language. While the simplicity can be handy on one level, the complexity of transforming the entirety of the complexity of the network of potential meanings is tremendously difficult.
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questions:
- What were the exact sizes of the slips? Had they been standardized at the time?
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Die so angelegten Zettel wurden lithographisch jeweils 40mal kopiert. Sodann wurde für jedes auf dem Zettel verzeichnete ägyptische Wort eine solche Kopie herangezogen, das jeweilige Wort in der Textabschrift rot unterstrichen, und die Lautfolge des Wortes, wie man sie damals zu kennen glaubte, in der gebräuchlichen ägyptologischen Umschrift in der rechten oberen Ecke des Zettels notiert. Die so vorbereiteten Zettel wurden dann alphabetisch und unter Trennung der Homonyme nach Wörtern in eigens für das Wör terbuch angefertigte Zettelkästen einsortiert. Dabei wurden von vornherein bestimmte Sondergruppen, die für das Wörterbuch selbst nur von begrenztem Interesse waren, neben dem lexikalischen Hauptalphabet separat gestellt, so vor allem die Namen von Personen, Königen, Göttern und Orten. Aus diesen Nebenprodukten der Verzettelung entstand z.B. Hermann Rankes maßgebliches Lexikon der ägyptischen Personennamen.
Once made, the initial note excerpts were copied 40 times using a lithography process. Then each word in the original slip was underlined in red on respective copies to be filed away alphabetically. At the top right corner of each slip was written down the phonetic sound of the rubricated word's Egyptian transcription. Within the collection certain special words were also separated for the names of people, kings, gods, and places to allow for additional study.
Talk about a problem of multiple storage!!
Tags
- network theory
- rhetoric
- XX
- dumping out one's zettelkasten
- alphabetical order
- thinking outside of the box
- local vs. global
- complex narratives
- Lie theory
- linear narratives
- card index as autobiography
- multiple storage
- Wörterbuch der ägyptischen Sprache
- open questions
- insight
- card index for dictionaries
- cards of equal size
- dictionaries
- Lie groups
- thinking inside of the box
- media studies
- small local wastes in exchange for greater global efficiencies
- zettelkasten complexity
- note card sizes
Annotators
URL
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www.reddit.com www.reddit.com
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At present I am using index cards as to index the books (and documents saved on the computer).
u/zleonska in discussing their paper notebook commonplace practice reports that finding their material within multiple notebooks isn't difficult but that, like W. Ross Ashby, they use index cards to index their commonplaces.
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Stroebe, Lilian L. “Die Stellung Des Mittelhochdeutschen Im College-Lehrplan.” Monatshefte Für Deutsche Sprache Und Pädagogik, 1924, 27–36. https://www.jstor.org/stable/44327729
The place of Middle High German in the college curriculum<br /> Lilian L. Stroebe<br /> Monthly magazines for German language and pedagogy (1924), pp. 27-36
... of course to the reading material. Especially in the field of etymology it is easy to stimulate the pupils' independence. For years I have had each of my students create an etymological card dictionary with good success, and I see that at the end of the course they have this card box ...
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Wigent, William David, Burton David William Housel, and Edward Harry Gilman. Modern Filing and How to File: A Textbook on Office System. Rochester, N.Y.: Yawman & Erbe Mfg. Co., 1916. http://archive.org/details/modernfilingate02compgoog.
Original .pdf converted with docdrop.org for OCR annotation on 2023-03-24.
annotation target: urn:x-pdf:3c1f14d64c91cf4b513efa16df4ed90d
Annotations: https://hypothes.is/users/chrisaldrich?q=url%3Aurn%3Ax-pdf%3A3c1f14d64c91cf4b513efa16df4ed90d
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archive.org archive.org
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Wigent, William David, Burton David William Housel, and Edward Harry Gilman. Modern Filing and How to File: A Textbook on Office System. Rochester, N.Y.: Yawman & Erbe Mfg. Co., 1916. http://archive.org/details/modernfilingate02compgoog.
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archive.org archive.org
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Shaw-Walker. Flexowriter File-Desks. Accessed March 24, 2023. http://archive.org/details/TNM_Flexowriter_File-Desks_-_Shaw-Walker_20171021_0001.
An interesting in-desk filing system for punched cards. Interesting I've not seen anything like this prior for a mini card index maintained in an office desk drawer.
Perhaps such a system wouldn't have been as easily accessible for use on a daily basis versus potentially more portable small systems that could have been transferred from desk to desk (person to person).
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niklas-luhmann-archiv.de niklas-luhmann-archiv.de
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9/8b2 "Multiple storage" als Notwendigkeit derSpeicherung von komplexen (komplex auszu-wertenden) Informationen.
Seems like from a historical perspective hierarchical databases were more prevalent in the 1960s and relational databases didn't exist until the 1970s. (check references for this historically)
Of course one must consider that within a card index or zettelkasten the ideas of both could have co-existed in essence even if they weren't named as such. Some of the business use cases as early as 1903 (earlier?) would have shown the idea of multiple storage and relational database usage. Beatrice Webb's usage of her notes in a database-like way may have indicated this as well.
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niklas-luhmann-archiv.de niklas-luhmann-archiv.de
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Die vermutlich zwischen 1952 und Anfang 1997 entstandenen Aufzeichnungen, mithilfe derer Luhmann die Ergebnisse seiner exzessiven und interdisziplinär breit angelegten Lektüre systematisch organisiert hat, dokumentieren die Theorieentwicklung auf eine einzigartige Weise, so dass man die Sammlung auch als eine intellektuelle Autobiographie verstehen kann.
The researchers at the Niklas Luhmann-Archive studying Niklas Luhmann's Zettelkasten consider that "the collection can be understood as an intellectual autobiography" (translation mine) even though his slips were generally undated.
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twitter.com twitter.com
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I also “thread” index cards, particularly when they’re all associated with the same journal article or book chapter (or book). Note that I number my index cards “1/“, “2/“, until I know the total number of cards I will use. To store them, I collate them with a paper clip.
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www.pikeschool.org www.pikeschool.org
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https://www.pikeschool.org/uploaded/Library/Files/takingnotesusingnotecards.pdf
found via:
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>Here are a few links to resources (in PDF format) to different models, strategies and techniques to take notes in index cards: https://t.co/tIVaeRA5nS and https://t.co/1CLkiyekzq
— Dr Raul Pacheco-Vega (@raulpacheco) November 26, 2018
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www.raulpacheco.org www.raulpacheco.org
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How do you store and classify index cards? I usually have boxes that fit my index cards, and add a plastic tab with the reference in Author (Date) format. Other people use different classification systems (by keyword, by topic, by author). I just recommend that the process be consistent across.
Pacheco-Vega stores his card with plastic tabs labeled by the references rather than by keyword or topic.
He does recommend consistency in filing though.
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Hawk Sugano has shared his Pile of Index Cards (PoIC) method as well.
Interesting to see a passing mention of Hawk Sugano's Pile of Index Cards here in a note taking context rather than a productivity one.
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I will share my processes to take notes using different methods. The very first method I use is the Index Cards Method.
Professor Raul Pacheco-Vega calls his note taking process the "Index Cards Method" and only subtly differentiates it from Niklas Luhmann's zettelkasten method.
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www.jowr.org www.jowr.org
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Since Luhmann’s system of the slip box is well-known, Ahrens’ valuable contribution lies less in providing an innovative technique of note-taking and the organization of academic writing, but more in reflecting critically on the very nature of writing as a medium of knowledge generation.
I think that by saying "Luhmann's system of the slip box is well-known", Stephanie Schiller is not talking about his specific box or his specific method, but the broader rhetorical method of the ars excerpendi and note taking in general. There isn't a whole lot of evidence to indicate that, except for a small segment of sociologists who may have know his work, that Luhmann's slip box was specifically well known at all up to the point of Ahrens' book.
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www.ebay.com www.ebay.com
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https://www.ebay.com/itm/115727768658
The Shaw=Walker Card Systems catalogue from circa 1899.
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www.ebay.com www.ebay.com
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https://www.ebay.com/itm/155447667554
This Catalog has a page with the various sizes of card catalog boxes available from Cole Steel in 1950s. The external sizes can be useful for placing the individual card sizes for some of these boxes on the secondary market.
They also include approximate card capacities.
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www.oldhatrecords.com www.oldhatrecords.com
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I love the fact that the image for "Research & History" here is a six drawer card index!
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www.universityproducts.com www.universityproducts.com
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https://www.universityproducts.com/catalogsearch/result/?q=card%20catalog
In 2023, University Products offered catalog cards for printing, but no longer offers physical card catalogs.
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radiolab.org radiolab.org
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Listened to on 2023-03-11
Much like Richard Feynman kept a list of his 12 favorite problems, Maurice Hilleman kept a running list of diseases for which he was working on developing vaccines to remedy.
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www.google.com www.google.com
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Seen in a Hoskins business equipment advertisement in Business magazine (1903) for card index:
YOUR BUSINESS AT YOUR FINGER ENDS
Close to the phrase "at your finger tips". Would it have appeared before or after this?
Business: The Magazine for Office, Store and Factory. Vol. 16. Business Man’s Publishing Company, 1903. https://www.google.com/books/edition/Business/QKaxezfHjL0C?hl=en&gbpv=0.
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www.google.com www.google.com
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General instructions for using a Memindex
HOW IT IS USED <br /> Things to be done today, jot on face card. Things to be done tomorrow or next Friday, jot on card for that day. Things to keep before you until done, jot on opposite front card. A matter for January 10th jot on a short card put under the band till you return to your desk, then file next to card for January 10th when it will come out and refresh your memory.
Things to be done when in New York or Chicago jot on card "N" or "C." The new address of Mr. Jones, under "J." Ideas on advertising jot on card tabbed "adv." Things for your clerk to do, on his card , etc., etc. Retire today's card tonight, carrying forward things not completed and put next card in the file in has proved that almost back of pocket case. The alphabet enables one to index all jottings for instant reference. This system is very comprehensive yet perfectly simple. You soon the learn to depend on it every hour of every day.
Within the general instructions in a 1904 Memindex advertisement (next to an ad for "Genuine Edison Incandescent Lamps") we see the general ideas of indexing things into the future and carrying undone tasks forward, just as is done in the bullet journal method.
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books.googleusercontent.com books.googleusercontent.comcontent1
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mindex.THIS is the name Howard L. Wilson, of Rochester, N.Y.,hasgivenhisvestpocket cardsystem.Itisa
Geyers Stationer. “Memindex Advertisement.” Geyer’s Stationer: Devoted to the Interests of the Stationery, Fancy Goods and Notion Trades, September 15, 1904. https://www.google.com/books/edition/Geyer_s_Stationer/L507AQAAMAAJ?hl=en&gbpv=0
Howard L. Wilson of Rochester, NY named his vest pocket card index system the Memindex.
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www.vistaprint.com www.vistaprint.com
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Standard business cards are 3.5″x 2″
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www.ebay.com www.ebay.com
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Poem from the inside back cover of a 1913 Memindex Catalog:
JUST JOT IT DOWN.
If you’re going to meet a man<br /> Jot it down<br /> If you’ve got a little plan<br /> Jot it down<br /> If you never can remember<br /> Your requirements for September<br /> ’Till October or November<br /> Jot ’em down.
If you’ve got a note to pay<br /> Jot it down<br /> If its due the first of May<br /> Jot it down<br /> If collections are so slow<br /> That to meet the note you know<br /> You must dun old Richard Roe<br /> Jot it down
If you have a happy thought<br /> Jot it down<br /> If there’s something to be bought<br /> Jot it down<br /> Whether duty calls or pleasure<br /> If you’re busy or at leisure<br /> It will help you beyond measure<br /> Jot it down
If there’re facts that you’d retain<br /> Jot ’em down<br /> If you’ve got to meet a train<br /> Jot it down<br /> If at work or only play<br /> If at home or far away<br /> In the night or in the day<br /> Jot it down
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c.1913 Wilson Memindex Desk Organzier Catalog Price List Booklet Rolodex Prequel
In a 1913 catalog for the Wilson Memindex, the company suggested putting to do items and one's schedule on one side of the card and potentially keeping one's accounts or a diary on the reverse side.
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TheGlobeWernicke Vertical FilingCabinets aremadeformosteverysizeofcommercialpapermanufacturedandin-cludeBill,Letter,Cap,Report,Document,and Card Indexfiles.
Noticing that while other filing companies have smaller half or quarter page ads in System, Globe-Wernicke Co. has a full page add for their filing cabinets.
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STANDARD INDEX CARD CO.
Fascinating to see the 8 various types of hole punches different card index systems may have used on their index card filing cabinets.
Advertisement from System, December 1906:
CARD INDEX SYSTEM <br /> If you are using Card Systems, as manufacturers we are in a position to save money for you on these supplies. We make suggestions to anyone desiring to install labor-saving-money- making Card Systems.<br /> Cards supplied for all makes of cabinets.<br /> Write for prices and estimates.<br /> STANDARD INDEX CARD CO.,<br /> 707-09 Arch St., Phila., Pa.
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he Automatic File & Index Co.
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TheCalculagraph
Beyond having people make direct copies of cards by hand or using carbon paper, The Calculagraph Company manufactured a copying machine for duplicating data.
There is an accompanying picture (which I haven't copied here). Advertisement from 1906 System Magazine:
The Calculagraph<br /> Makes individual records of actual<br /> working time on separate cards<br /> which may be used interchangeably<br /> for Cost Accounting, for Pay-rolls and<br /> for a number of other purposes with-<br /> out copying or transcribing a single<br /> figure, by simply assorting the cards<br /> and adding the records directly from<br /> their faces.<br /> A card containing all the work<br /> records of one man for a week may<br /> be useful for pay-roll purposes, but it<br /> is utterly worthless for learning the<br /> cost of products, until all the items<br /> have been copied or transcribed for<br /> classification.<br /> The Calculagraph requires a large<br /> number of cards in a factory employ-<br /> ing several hundred persons, but it<br /> Saves Clerical Labor. (In one<br /> factory it saves $150.00 per week).<br /> Cards Are Cheaper Than Labor<br /> The Calculagraph Makes No<br /> Clerical Errors.<br /> Let us send you our printed matter.<br /> CALCULAGRAPH COMPANY<br /> 1414 JEWELERS BUILDING, NEW YORK CITY
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ARDS CAN BE USEDINSOMEBRANCH OF YOUR BUSINESS
INDEX CARDS CAN BE USED IN SOME BRANCH OF YOUR BUSINESS<br /> We have eight very useful forms. You can use one or more to good advantage and profit. Let us send you the Samples?<br /> UNITED STATES CARD INDEX CO.<br /> Office and Factory: 112 Liberty Street, NEW YORK<br /> Also send for our Priced Sample Set 'E' which includes all rulings, grades and weights of Index Cards and Guides.'
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Federal Steel FixtureCompany
Federal Steel Fixture Company manufactured a variety of steel office furniture including desks, cabinets, lockers, filing cabinets, shelving, and card cabinets.
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TheSateliteCombinationCard IndexCabinetandTelephoneStand
A fascinating combination of office furniture types in 1906!
The Adjustable Table Company of Grand Rapids, Michigan manufactured a combination table for both telephones and index cards. It was designed as an accessory to be stood next to one's desk to accommodate a telephone at the beginning of the telephone era and also served as storage for one's card index.
Given the broad business-based use of the card index at the time and the newness of the telephone, this piece of furniture likely was not designed as an early proto-rolodex, though it certainly could have been (and very well may have likely been) used as such in practice.
I totally want one of these as a side table for my couch/reading chair for both storing index cards and as a temporary writing surface while reading!
This could also be an early precursor to Twitter!
Folks have certainly mentioned other incarnations: - annotations in books (person to self), - postcards (person to person), - the telegraph (person to person and possibly to others by personal communication or newspaper distribution)
but this is the first version of short note user interface for both creation, storage, and distribution by means of electrical transmission (via telephone) with a bigger network (still person to person, but with potential for easy/cheap distribution to more than a single person)
Tags
- clerical errors
- user interface
- copying
- Cincinnati Ohio
- accounting influence on note taking
- filing cabinets
- Green bay Wisconsin
- Philadelphia Pennsylvania
- Grand Rapids Michigan
- evolution of technology
- Globe-Wernicke Co.
- Calculagraph
- Standard Index Card Co.
- zettelkasten boxes
- index cards
- The Automatic File & Index Co.
- economics
- card index
- telegraph
- satelite stands
- copyists
- intellectual history
- card index filing cabinets
- audience
- rolodexes
- advertising
- accounting
- annotations
- office furniture
- telephones
- 1906
- postcards
- card index for business
- United States Card Index Co.
- technology
- Federal Steel Fixture Company
- Adjustable Table Company
Annotators
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www.ebay.com www.ebay.com
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Antique Calculagraph Machine Time Clock Card Recorder Old Factory Punch Vintage
https://www.ebay.com/itm/293124175605
For advertisement from 1906, see: https://hypothes.is/a/OGREvL98Ee2mYVO2Fqim6Q
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www.ebay.com www.ebay.com
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www.ebay.com www.ebay.com
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1930s Wilson Memindex Co Index Card Organizer Pre Rolodex Ad Price List Brochure
archived page: https://web.archive.org/web/20230310010450/https://www.ebay.com/itm/165910049390
Includes price lists
List of cards includes: - Dated tab cards for a year from any desired. - Blank tab cards for jottings arranged by subject. - These were sold in 1/2 or 1/3 cut formats - Pocket Alphabets for jottings arranged by letter. - Cash Account Cards [without tabs]. - Extra Record Cards for permanent memoranda. - Monthly Guides for quick reference to future dates. - Blank Guides for filing records by subject.. - Alphabet Guides for filing alphabetically.
Memindex sales brochures recommended the 3 x 5" cards (which had apparently been standardized by 1930 compared to the 5 1/2" width from earlier versions around 1906) because they could be used with other 3 x 5" index card systems.
In the 1930s Wilson Memindex Company sold more of their vest pocket sized 2 1/4 x 4 1/2" systems than 3 x 5" systems.
Some of the difference between the vest sized and regular sized systems choice was based on the size of the particular user's handwriting. It was recommended that those with larger handwriting use the larger cards.
By the 1930's at least the Memindex tag line "An Automatic Memory" was being used, which also gave an indication of the ubiquity of automatization of industrialized life.
The Memindex has proved its success in more than one hundred kinds of business. Highly recommended by men in executive positions, merchants, manufacturers, managers, .... etc.
Notice the gendering of users specifically as men here.
Features: - Sunday cards were sold separately and by my reading were full length tabs rather than 1/6 tabs like the other six days of the week - Lids were custom fit to the bases and needed to be ordered together - The Memindex Jr. held 400 cards versus the larger 9 inch standard trays which had space for 800 cards and block (presumably a block to hold them up or at an angle when partially empty).
The Memindex Jr., according to a price sheet in the 1930s, was used "extensively as an advertising gift".
The Memindex system had cards available in bundles of 100 that were labeled with the heading "Things to Keep in Sight".
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www.ebay.com www.ebay.com
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Vintage Memindex Wilson Wood Box 1937-38 Diary Planner Date Keeper Ephemera
Includes particularly good image of the individual day cards:
Notice that the tabs are done as 1/6th as most of these systems were manufactured/sold with out including Sunday.
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www.flickr.com www.flickr.com
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Getting Things Done with Index Cards<br /> by Jazz DiMauro
referenced in Lifehacker article as early as 2005
Note the use of envelopes for separation. Did this predate the Noguchi Filing System, inspired by it or wholly separate?
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