You said the difference between your commonplace and a Zettelkasten was form and binding? Could you expand on your set up/process? It looks like your cards are loose like a zettel, but I do see a to-do tab which isnât zettel-y.
reply to u/LowkeyHooligan at https://reddit.com/r/commonplacebook/comments/1gdpiis/space_for_a_commonplace/
I'm not talking about my specific practice but commonplacing and Zettelkasten writ large. Early users of slips in the tradition of ars excerpendi were commonplacing, they were just putting their excerpts onto slips (or scraps) of paper rather than in a notebook. Far too many think the idea of Zettelkasten was "invented" by Niklas Luhmann when in fact the tradition goes back to at least Konrad Gessner in the 16th century. There was absolutely nothing innovative about Luhmann's Zettelkastenâeven his numbering system was widely used by the mid 1910s. Early Zettelkasten (aka card indexes in English) were commonplaces, just done on slips of paper rather than bound "slips" in book format.
The more recent "Zettelkasten Method" practitioners, (roughly after June 2013) have largely omitted the centuries-long intellectual history of their practice and are guilty of too much Luhmann worship. On the other hand, they hew heavily toward the minimalist approach and don't decorate their work with stickers, drawings, or other art which seems to have come into fashion in the social media era. This is what I would call "drolleries on acid" without the benefit of knowing about the tradition of ars memoria.
My practice with these goes well beyond commonplacing. Most early 20th century card indexes were used for a variety of purposes beyond commonplacing too including indexing, tickler files, databases, rolodexes, etc. What you're describing sounds more like my modified Memindex practice (https://boffosocko.com/2023/03/09/the-memindex-method-an-early-precursor-of-the-memex-hipster-pda-43-folders-gtd-basb-and-bullet-journal-systems/). You'll find more on my particular practice and the historical practices of others at: https://boffosocko.com/research/zettelkasten-commonplace-books-and-note-taking-collection/
For early 20th century uses, try: - Kaiser, Julius Otto. 1908. Card System at the Office. London: Vacher and Sons. http://archive.org/details/cardsystematoffi00kaisrich. - Kaiser, Julius Otto. 1911. Systematic Indexing. London: Sir Isaac Pitman & Sons, Ltd. http://archive.org/details/systematicindexi00kaisuoft. - Duffield, David Walter, and Various. 1951. Progressive Indexing and Filing. 5th ed. New York, NY: Remington Rand Inc. http://archive.org/details/progressiveindex0000varo.

