Skip to Main Content

A Software Ecosystem for Research, Zettelkasten Note-Taking, and Writing [UNDER DEVELOPMENT]

Resources about Obsidian

Obsidian is a freely downloadable software, also with for-pay features, that enables creation of interlinking notes and links to external resources such as websites, Word documents, Excel spreadsheets, and pdfs. 

Plug-ins are available to enhance Obsidian's capabilities. Contact the help desk with questions about the security issues involved with plug-ins; see the caveat about plugins here:

Here are links to Obsidian and related websites:

General Notes & Tips About Using Obsidian for Note-taking and Writing

This box has broad points about using Obsidian for note-taking and writing. The next box provides more specific points about its use in implementing the Zettelkasten system discussed elsewhere in this guide.

The software enables creation of a "vaults" relating to a particular project. Within the vaults are folders that help organize Obsidian notes files, i.e. md files.

Out of a note you can link to:

  • websites
  • other notes
  • links that enable you to bring up folders or documents in File Explorer
  • the full text of items indexed in Zotero.

You can also embed content within notes.

Obsidian is useful not just for academic writing and research, but also for organizing and interrelating notes and documents in any domain and providing an environment to maintain task lists.

Tips:

  • You can backup your Obsidian vaults by using cloud resources such as DropBox; to learn about latter, go here and type in dropbox.
  • Obsidian vaults require active maintenance. As your project evolves, you'll find yourself editing and deleting note files as your writing evolves. 

 

Using Obsidian for Zettelkasten Note-taking

Here are ideas about possible uses of Obsidian to implement the Zettelkasten note-taking system discussed elsewhere in this guide.

  • When using Obsidian to draft a manuscript, first create a note (md file) containing a table of contents that corresponds to your anticipated outline for the manuscript. The elements of the table of contents are links out to the individual md notes that contain your working drafts for each section of the manuscript. If you are working on an extensive and involved piece of writing, these latter notes can in turn consist of table of contents notes in their own right.
  • Create note templates for the various types of notes discussed in the Zettelkasten page. See the box below about what elements to consider going into your templates.
  • The individual md files that contain drafts of your writing can in turn link out to literature and permanent notes, to use Zettelkasten terminology. As you compose the text of your manuscript, you can then click out to the notes rather than clutter your manuscript with them.

Obsidian Note-taking Templates For the Zettelkasten System

The following discusses the structure of templates you can use to create the various kinds of notes in the Zettelkasten system. (See the discussion of the Zettelkasten system for details about latter.) For information about how to create notes using Obsidian templates, see here. 

FLEETING NOTES

For what the Zettelkasten approach calls "fleeting notes" (see notes elsewhere in this guide about them), one approach is to create a template with this structure:

{{date:YYYY-MM-DD}}

## Ideas

-
## Tasks

-

You can put fleeting notes in a folder you create with that name. Remember to process the fleeting note by incorporating its ideas or tasks somewhere in the vault for your project. We may regard "Tasks" as a subset of "Ideas"--typically in this context a "task" is something you think about that involves addressing, exploring or implementing an "idea".

Or, you can use the daily notes feature in Obsidian. Caveat: this will automatically create a note each day, which you may or may not want. See here for details about this feature. Using settings, configure the daily notes feature (an icon on the ribbon on the left in Obsidian) so that this template creates a daily note that appears in a folder you create called "FLEETING NOTES TO RELOCATE". (The caps scream a bit, but are helpful as a reminder to process the fleeting notes.) At your leisure, you can then distribute the notes into the relevant parts of the vault.

If you want a prompt that reminds you to record your new ideas, go to the settings under "Daily notes", where you can configure the vault so that you "Open daily notes on startup", that is, "Open your daily note automatically whenever you open this vault."

LITERATURE NOTES

Here is one possible format for a literature notes template. When you create literature notes, you can consolidate or synthesize the annotations you made in Zotero for a particular item. The idea is to create one literature note per item. See the directions from Zotero about how to do so. 

You may want to create a Literature Notes folder for your project. Create the literature notes in that folder.

Here is one possible format for a template:

Author

Title

{{date:YYYY-MM-DD}}

Zotero link to full text:

Notes:


Abstract or summary from item:

PERMANENT NOTES

Permanent notes are where you can synthesize the notes you created in literature notes. While literature notes only concern one publication, you can reference multiple publications within one permanent note. Consider however only dealing with one idea, subject, or concept in each permanent note. The permanent notes can feed into the writing of your manuscript. In selecting the topics for permanent notes, consider keeping the topics they cover close to the overall structure of your manuscript. On the other hand, occasionally you may want to use permanent notes as a vehicle for exploring new topics whose possible relevance for your work you want to explore.

{{date:YYYY-MM-DD}}

List of publications used to create the permanent note:

Zotero link(s) to full text:

Notes:

 INDEX NOTES

The idea is to create pointers to md files about a given topic. Another term for these notes, at least insofar as one use of this type of note is to create a table of contents note for an entire manuscript or portion of your manuscript.  Here are two possible structures for index notes: 

(1)

Index or hub note for a particular topic; the note will identify a list of notes. Where "first item" appears, the hyphen sets up bulleting of list items.

{{date:YYYY-MM-DD}}

- [[first item]]

(2)

Table of Contents to a section or chapter of a larger manuscript; where "first item" appears, type the title of the first section or chapter title, and so on. You can create a table of contents that in turn points to another table of contents. Or it can point to a note containing the actual text of that section or chapter. Again, the hyphen sets up bulleting of list items.

{{date:YYYY-MM-DD}}

- [[first item]]

PROJECT NOTES

Project notes can take many different forms; see p. 44 of the book "How to Take Smart Notes" suggests. Create templates as needed.