The magic of a personal keyword system
For notes to be searchable, they need an afterlife. The key to creating an afterlife for my notes — which live in both the analog and digital worlds — is keywords. Keywords that I create when revisiting my notes hours or days later. Keywords I attach to portions of notes, rendering them searchable on my computer. Keywords, like bow ties, are cool.
Teaching and research produce hundreds of thousands of annotated documents. We can all use searchable coolness when trying to find what you’ve already noted amidst that ocean of scribbles.
In the here and now. Many guides on notetaking encourage you to rely on descriptive titles to render analog notes searchable. Ryder’s bullet journal system relies on descriptive titles for just this reason, as does the Cornell notes system.
The goal of a descriptive title is to recall what is inside that day’s or meeting’s notes.
Descriptive titles refer to the concepts covered in a class. Or the name of the event being discussed. Or just the date, for those who take notes chronologically. Or, in my case, simply remind me of what meeting I’m in by way of making me write out what we intend to cover in said meeting.
Titles, in other words, help in the moment. Creating a descriptive title helps you to remember the big picture — how details from the book your reading or lecture you’re in connect to the major lessons the author or professor wants you to walk away appreciating.
Coming up with the title is the point. Establishing the connection back to the “big question” or objective of that single meeting or class is the valuable part of a title.
For the future. Keywords, the way I use them, are nets. Keywords are one-to-two words long. They capture topics and themes and issues related to my research and teaching interests.
Keywords help me to capture notes form long ago that are directly, thematically or tangentially related to the idea I’m looking for notes on in the present.
The goal is to build bridges to the themes that I personally find important, or surprising, or worrying. Those social problems I publish on and teach about. Relationships across notes. And in so doing, my annotations and notes are granted an afterlife through my searches.
I worked with my sister, a trained librarian and archivist, to build a list of keywords that is adaptable over time and fits how I think
I review my meeting notes at the end of every school day. A deliberate scan of each collection of notes. I look, specifically, for topics and themes from my keyword database. And I jot those keywords in the topmost outer edge of the page. Above the title.
Top corners offer easy flipping. Like a flip-book cartoon for nerdery
I review my margin notes in books by chapter. And then I similarly write keywords of themes within those notes at the topmost outer corner of each chapter’s first page.
Then I tag each title with the jotted keywords inside my master DEVONThink database (an exploration for a different post). The keywords. The title. And the page number within the book or notebook. The whole review-and-record keyword process takes less than five minutes.
And good gravy the rewards.
Searching keywords brings up notes I often forgot I had made. And books I forgot I’d read. And meetings I’d forgotten were held. All related to what I wanted to recall. A useful afterlife for sure.
This week’s Inked Tines update includes last week’s currently inked writing tools.
Toolset
Pens. No standout combo this week. And my guitar gently weeps.
TWSBI 580-AL (1.1 mm) — 1/5. Saw targeted use for headings in notes and for short reflections while journaling. Mostly sat in my pen case. Suited for loose reflecting over detailed notetaking.
Franklin-Christoph 45 (F) — 1/3. The 45 takes one-half turn to uncap. Perfect for meetings and for scratch notes. Extra Dimensions lent sheen to lists and grading trackers. And the narrow F line kept detailed notes readable. Nice pairing.
KACO Green Edge (F) — 1/2. The snap cap was my fidget-aid, especially during Thursday’s 2-hour long all-hands meeting. Melancholic Grey was reliable and dried quickly. Task management, meeting notes, and reading notes.
Platinum 3776 (B) — 1/2. The go-to journaling combo last week. The wet, broad nib brought out Harmony’s shading and haloing. My tune-up eliminated the hard starts that previously plagued this nib. The dark colorway also keep meetings running without distraction. Happy happy.
Kaweco Sport (EF) — 2/3. Proved an excellent pocket notetaker. Summer Storm flowed every time I put nib to bent pocket-notebook page. The cap sealed well, preventing evaporation — even during long days in my pocket. Plus: work notes and some margin notes.
Franklin-Christoph 31 (M SIG) — 3/4. Toffee was of two minds last week. Started a honey-bright brown. Ended the week a deep caramel. Sharp SIG grind lent fun personality to my slowly written end-of-year reflections and thank you notes. Also: journaling, paper marking and reading notes.
Notebooks. Work bujo. Rhodia Goalbook (A5). The final week of meetings and grading led to five new pages. A one-page weekly, a grading tracker, and three pages of meeting notes.
The school year ends just shy of 470 handwritten pages. Task lists, teaching schedules, lesson plan outlines, lecture notes, meeting notes, grading trackers, and many other collections (to use Bullet Journal speak) live within three notebooks: two Musubi Cosmo Air Light 83s and one Rhodia Goalbook. Busy year.
Focusing more narrowly on last week, I opted for a single-page task management spread last week. Just enough space to contain a week with two days off and a third day working remotely from my desk — on the singular task of grading final papers. All maintained with the KACO and its mid-toned Melancholic Gray.
I rotated across three pens for the grading tracker. Extra Dimension for one section, Toffee for a second, and Summer Storm for my third section. All three offer narrow lines: F, M, and EF, respectively.
The three ink colors are also clearly distinguishable from one another. Scanning my page for the proper section was rendered easy-peasy.
Journal. YT Bindery Yu-yo (A5). My history of three journaling sessions a week continued, A welcome regularity that balanced well against the topsy-turvy final week of the school year. Six new pages in all.
I tapped the fun M SIG nib in my Franklin-Christoph 31 for Sunday’s longform reflection. Robert Oster’s Toffee brightened three pages of writing with fun intermittent shading. The wide section on the 31 made controlling the angle of the sharp grind to the page easy.
Sharp and easy on the eyes
The next entry is two pages. A loose reflection on my reading list and a big-picture reaction to finishing Hitchens’ book. All written with a newly-tuned B Platinum 3776. The round, forgiving B nib ensured I could focus on my ideas instead of the pen’s angle to the page.
My final entry was a one sentence jotting to record my feelings after our final meeting of the school year. The TWSBI’s broad and flowery 1.1 mm stub nib seemed a fitting tool for a posterity statement. Plus, the broadness of the lines stretched my short post to nearly a third of an A5 page. Smoke and mirrors.
Written dry. All six pen-and-ink pairings survived the week. The four round nibs ensured I was able to write clearly from my lap during my school’s multiple all-hands meetings.
And the two ground nibs offered fun alternatives while seated at a table. The M SIG proved most useful as an accent pair.
Combined, I had a pen tailored for every writing need last week. Victory.
Newly inked. Not-a-one. I had a great, if odd-ball, collection of six pen combos to choose from. A successful final currently inked for last school year.
The collection
Incoming / new orders. The renowned DC Pen Show Embargo forbids new stationery purchases until the August show. I have followed the rules.
Outgoing / trades or sales. Four 5 ml samples of ink left for new homes. I shipped the samples to a fellow Pen Addict Slack-er. I felt for person as their grey ink sample, the excellent L’Artisan Pastellier Gris de Payne, had grown mold. One must ever spread the good word on grey inks.
So I messaged to offer a replacement sample from my own bottle. Lo and behold, my own bottle had also grown mold! Whomp whomp.
It’s … alive
I opted for four other samples that are close in color. An inky apology for getting their hopes up. I should have checked my bottle before making an offer. Excited to hear their thoughts.
Currently reading and listening
Fiction. Another 40 pages in The Three Body Problem last week. The buildup to aliens continues. Liu is a methodical writer. I get the feeling that characters are being carefully placed for the big reveal.
It’s enlightening to read a Chinese author’s take on fictional life within the cultural revolution. Liu establishes a sense of desperation and characters’ doublethink. Clever, subtle writing.
Nonfiction. The extent of my end-of-year grading flooded my usual nonfiction reading times. That said, all 96 papers are graded and averaged. Grades are in four days early this year. I enjoy being ahead of schedule.
Music. Grading requires active, participatory concentration. I need to read into the words my students provided. They’re still learning to express their thinking. As such, I often need to infer their arguments and connections between their claims.
Reading to complete students’ ideas easily accommodates music with vocals. Arctic Monkey’s fabulous and now classic (read: old) AM album played on-and-off throughout the week. In particular, I recommend checking out “Do I Wanna Know?” and “I Wanna Be Yours.”
