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Zettelkasten

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Knowledge management and note-taking method

"Card file" redirects here. For the use of cards in library cataloguing, see Card catalog. For the Microsoft application, see Cardfile. For the rotating device used to store information, see Rolodex.

A German scholar's physical Zettelkasten or card file<br>A card file for personal knowledge management can be made up of notes containing numbers, tags (blue) and cross-references to other notes (red). A tag index (bottom right) allows topical cross-referencing.<br>A Zettelkasten (German: 'slipbox', plural Zettelkästen ) or card file consists of small items of information stored on Zetteln (German: 'slips'; singular: Zettel), paper slips or cards, that may be linked to each other through subject headings or other metadata such as numbers and tags.[1][2] It has often been used as a system of note-taking and personal knowledge management for research, study, and writing.[3]

In the 1980s, the card file began to be used as metaphor in the interface of some hypertextual personal knowledge base software applications such as NoteCards.[4] In the 1990s, such software inspired the invention of wikis.[5]

Use in personal knowledge management<br>[edit]

As used in research, study, and writing, a card file consists of many individual notes with ideas and other short pieces of information that are taken down as they occur or are acquired.[6] The notes may be numbered hierarchically so that new notes may be inserted at the appropriate place, and contain metadata to allow the note-taker to associate notes with each other.[6] For example, notes may contain subject headings or tags that describe key aspects of the note, and they may reference other notes. The numbering, metadata, format, and structure of the notes are subject to variation depending on the specific method employed.[7]

The system not only allows a researcher to store and retrieve information related to their research, but has also long been used to enhance creativity.[7][8][9]

History<br>[edit]

See also: Index card § History

The paper slip or card has long been used by individual researchers and by organizations to manage information, including the specialized form of the card catalog.[10]

Coming from a commonplace book tradition,[11] Conrad Gessner (1516–1565) invented his own method of organization in which the individual notes could be rearranged at any time. In retrospect, his recommendation of gluing slips onto bound sheets[12] was an innovation in moving from commonplace books to index cards as a form for scholarly information management.[13]: 212–225

Filing cabinet for paper slips in Vincent Placcius's De arte excerpendi (1689)[14]<br>The first early modern card cabinet was designed by 17th-century English inventor Thomas Harrison (c. 1640s). Harrison's manuscript on the "ark of studies"[15] (Arca studiorum) describes a small cabinet that allows users to excerpt books and file their notes in a specific order by attaching pieces of paper to metal hooks labeled by subject headings.[16] Harrison's system was edited and improved by Vincent Placcius in his well-known handbook on excerpting methods (De arte excerpendi, 1689).[14][17] The German polymath Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646–1716) was known to have relied on Harrison's invention in at least one of his research projects.[17]

In 1767, Carl Linnaeus used "little paper slips of a standard size" to record information for his research.[18] Over 1,000 of Linnaeus's precursors to the modern index card containing information collected from books and other publications and measuring five by three inches are housed at the Linnean Society of London.[16]

Later in his own commonplace, under the heading "My way of collecting materials for future writings" (translated), Johann Jacob Moser (1701–1785) described the algorithms with which he filled his card boxes.[7]

The 1796 idyll Leben des Quintus Fixlein by German Romantic writer Jean Paul is structured according to the Zettelkasten in which the protagonist keeps his autobiography.[7][19] Paul ultimately assembled 12,000 paper scraps into his commonplace books over the course of his lifetime.[20]

French scholars Charles-Victor Langlois and Charles Seignobos, in their Introduction to the Study of History (1897), recommended that historians take notes on paper slips or cards, and they commented: "Every one admits nowadays that it is advisable to collect materials on separate cards or slips of paper."[21] However, some decades later other scholars said that in America in the 1890s the card-file note-taking system was "still something of a novelty".[22]

20th century<br>[edit]

Antonin Sertillanges' book The...