Best practice for creating reference notes

Bart

Hi y'all!

I have a question about best practices for where to keep notes about reference information. I've read that the back of a physical note card for a reference (in digital terms, the notes section in my reference management software) should have some basic information about the reference. But I don't know what that means? If I write a short summary of a journal article in my own words, is that what goes there? Is it it better to make it a zettle? If so, what should go on the back of the reference card? Notes about the author?

Thanks a lot!

Garwyx

I add summaries to their respective items in Zotero as child notes (my reference manager). I then create individual index cards for each thought I find relevant to keep, to embed in my Zettelkasten, and add the reference in markdown-format to the card. There is a bibtex-file in my note folder that has the info of the publication. If I feel productive I also add a direct link to the Zotero item.

For many papers I keep only the main idea so that's simple, but when I want to keep multiple ideas, they each get their own note.

Bart

So summaries to the reference software. The zettles can come from thought processes during the writing of the summaries. No summaries as Zettles. Is that right? I can see that makes sense.

Vinho

I have a 3-step system:

1. Whilst reading something, attending a talk, watching a webinar etc. I take reference notes that will not end up in my Zettelkasten. I mostly do it with an outliner-software (OmniOutliner) because it makes it easy to move things around whilst taking notes.
2. In my Zettelkasten, I have notes that summarise the opinion of other people on different questions. I will transfer the resource notes to opinion zettels.
3. I then try to integrate the opinion zettels into my own thoughts on the different questions, which are on separate zettels in the Zettelkasten.

In my reference manager, I don't store any notes. I just add links to the associated reference note (if there is one).

This is for complex resources. If it's just a few lines and easy to understand, I will skip step 1.

Garwyx

@Bart said:
So summaries to the reference software. The zettles can come from thought processes during the writing of the summaries. No summaries as Zettles. Is that right? I can see that makes sense.

Indeed. This way, I have the summary of a paper attached to the paper, allowing me to quickly see what it was about. This comes in handy when I go back to papers.
My summaries are often bullet points of the key features of something I read. Those points may go into the Zettelkasten directly.
I take notes of conferences, meetings and videos in a physical notebook, and review those later to decide what ends up in my ZK.

Disclaimer: I have only started my ZK a few weeks ago, so I am still greatly integrating it. I have taken notes for a while lot longer.

Bart

Thanks for the input. It's nice to see what others are doing. I also just started my Zettelkasten but have been taking notes for the rest of my life. Those notes are worthless now, and I certainly can't say I've memorized everything I supposedly learned. My notes are currently about research so my quick notes are on articles. I'm enjoying MarginNote for that at the moment. I can highlight on my tablet, then write handwritten notes attached to the highlights. There's even a way to to view your notes away from the text and connect them up into mindmaps. Regardless of all that, I rewrite my summaries and zettels as the following step. I suppose any quotes worth keeping should stay with reference notes as well.