What's the point of literature notes?

libver

I'm a beginner that's been using the Zettelkasten method (found out about it from Sönke Ahrens' book) for a few good months but I find myself worrying over the fact that I spend more time writing literature notes than permanent notes. When I began writing for the first time they were huge essays so I tried writing them more concise (kind of like mini-essays?) but as time passed I started to lose the point as to why one should even write literature notes in the first place.

IIRC Niklas Luhmann didn't even really write literature notes (and if he had to he would just write the source and page he got the information from, maximum a 1 sentence summary, do please correct me if I'm wrong about this) and I was wondering if this is the right way to write literature notes?

Any help would be greatly appreciated. I wish you all the best!

harr

You can find examples of Luhmann's literature notes in comment 24883 and comment 25053.

The point of literature notes depends very much on your reading goals and reading strategy. I found the advice in How to read a book valuable.

The point also depends on your note-taking goals. What kind of notes do you want to have available later?

libver

Hi @harr , sorry for responding a bit late, it took me a while to properly think about how to answer. Thanks a lot for your examples and to answer to your questions:

The point of literature notes depends very much on your reading goals and reading strategy.

• Using "How to read a book" and its framework, I can pretty much say that my reading goal is to deeply understand a book and the reading strategy to be "analytical reading". I was also interested in syncoptical reading but I don't want to get too ahead of myself yet since I'm still a beginner in all of this.
• When I think about my reasons in the past, I wanted literature notes to be kind of like various key points, arguments, concepts from the author saved along with a few observations of mine but as said previously I got too carried away with writing and it became a huge mess.

The point also depends on your note-taking goals. What kind of notes do you want to have available later?

• Basically atomic notes, capturing the essence of ideas without needing to go look for its original context anymore that can help me with various problems, projects, build general knowledge and improve my thinking skills.

Thank you for taking the time to respond!

harr

@libver said:
Using "How to read a book" and its framework, I can pretty much say that my reading goal is to deeply understand a book and the reading strategy to be "analytical reading". I was also interested in syncoptical reading but I don't want to get too ahead of myself yet since I'm still a beginner in all of this.

I find reading notes useful for this kind of reading. That's where I think in writing while reading a book.

@libver said:
When I think about my reasons in the past, I wanted literature notes to be kind of like various key points, arguments, concepts from the author saved along with a few observations of mine

That's a classic way of note-taking. It is recommended by well-regarded authors like Umberto Eco and many more.

@libver said:
but as said previously I got too carried away with writing and it became a huge mess.

Same here. ;-) In my digital Zettelkasten I decided on a very simple solution: embrace the mess!

My reading note are messy, because they are a working tool. I use them for questions and drafts and thinking and everything else that is related to a source.

@libver said:
(…) atomic notes, capturing the essence of ideas without needing to go look for its original context anymore that can help me with various problems, projects, build general knowledge and improve my thinking skills.

Personally, I do both:

• I write big messy reading notes for all the stuff that interests me while reading and that I might want to find again later on, like random facts, quotes and keywords.
• I also write decontextualized atomic notes, but only a few. I'm very selective and I try to make them neat.

Having reading notes makes it easier to keep the atomic notes neat. I don't have to write atomic notes just to make random details findable in my zettelkasten. My collecting needs are covered by the reading notes. :-)

The reading notes also allow me to capture context that is useful for more than one atomic note (or zettels, as I like to call them). I simply link the reading note (or source note, as I like to call them).

So maybe as a rule of thumb: all the messy details go into the source notes, including bibliographical data and reading notes, so that I can write fewer and more concise zettels.

I like to store source notes and zettels in the same system (the same Obsidian vault), because I like to link them both ways. Source notes link zettels, zettels link source notes.

Another way to think of it is that having messy source notes removes some of the pressure from writing zettels. If I don't know how to write a zettel about something I read in a book, I don't obsess about it. I write that idea/thought/fact/insight/detail down in the source note, where I can find it easily when I need it.

libver

Alright, thanks for your feedback @harr , I'll probably keep experimenting with the format for literature notes (reading/source notes, not sure which name to use) so that there's a healthy compromise between length and time spent on them so that I can focus a lot better on the permanent notes I want to actually write.

Have a nice day or night

harr

Thanks, you too!

Sascha

@libver I had a similar experience and simply skipped the literature note step.

This is how I process a source, for example:

The closest thing that I create to a so-called literature note are dedicated notes for core sources that I will revisit repeatedly (Nietzsches work, the Bible, etc.)

mlbrandt

After I put the reference into Zotero, I create a "literature note" as a google document in a folder in my google drive. Since a lot of my reading is digital, the underlining I do and notes I take while reading are easy to put into the note.

But the power of these notes for me is what I do at the top (above the quotes and notes) - a 2-3 sentence summary of why the source is important for my thinking (aka the three most important points of the paper/book... sometimes as bullet points).

GeoEng51

To add my (low value) 2 cents worth, I do not use literature cards at all. I simply put references to specific books or papers directly in each zettel (where that is appropriate). If they are technical (engineering) articles or papers, then I usually keep a pdf copy on my hard drive, which are usually highlighted and sometimes with added comments. But I feel no obligation to include those somehow in my ZK, as that would serve no purpose (for me).