# A starter vault for history students **URL:** \ **Category:** Workflows & Templates\ **Created:** [June 17, 2021, 2:36pm UTC](https://forum.obsidian.md/t/a-starter-vault-for-history-students/19775 "2021-06-17T14:36:15Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 7\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![drgraham](https://forum.obsidian.md/user_avatar/forum.obsidian.md/drgraham/32/8309_2.png) [@drgraham](https://forum.obsidian.md/u/drgraham)\ **Post date:** [June 17, 2021, 2:36pm UTC](https://forum.obsidian.md/t/a-starter-vault-for-history-students/19775/1 "2021-06-17T14:36:15Z")
Hi folks. I’m trying to get my undergraduate students to be mindful about how they’re taking notes from academic literature. I like atomic notes because when I start compiling things together, the paper, the article almost assembles itself. This experience I think would be useful for my students, because the terror of the blank page really harms their writing. All that to say, I’ve put together a ‘starter vault’ for them that tries to keep things fairly simple (not using the language of ‘literature notes’ because that confuses the issue). Hypothesis-to-obsidian, zotero-to-obsidian, some project management with kanban boards. Just started last night, but thought maybe folks’d find it interesting. [https://github.com/shawngraham/obsidian-student-starter-vault](https://github.com/shawngraham/obsidian-student-starter-vault) ---
**Author:** ![a\_wue](https://forum.obsidian.md/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/a/ecae2f/32.png) [@a\_wue](https://forum.obsidian.md/u/a_wue)\ **Post date:** [June 19, 2021, 10:10am UTC](https://forum.obsidian.md/t/a-starter-vault-for-history-students/19775/2 "2021-06-19T10:10:15Z")
I’m following the Youtube channel _History4Today_ of _Dr. Dan Allosso_ ([History4Today - Notes, Research, Writing - YouTube](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCNw0lsJ9-4ya4OiDQWsRl5A/videos)). He and his history students also work with Obsidian. Just in case you don’t know him yet. Lots of very good videos. EDIT: read your starter vault. Thanks for explaining OCR in Obsidian. ---
**Author:** ![drgraham](https://forum.obsidian.md/user_avatar/forum.obsidian.md/drgraham/32/8309_2.png) [@drgraham](https://forum.obsidian.md/u/drgraham)\ **Post date:** [June 19, 2021, 9:55pm UTC](https://forum.obsidian.md/t/a-starter-vault-for-history-students/19775/3 "2021-06-19T21:55:49Z")
You’re welcome! The OCR template is quite neat too in that it shows a way of piping the results from external tools into Obsidian. I adapted it today to run a python tf-idf similarity script [-details here-](https://github.com/shawngraham/obsidian-student-starter-vault/blob/main/0%20getting%20started/Configuring%20the%20similar%20notes%20template.md) and I can imagine using it with something like [trafilatura](https://trafilatura.readthedocs.io/en/latest/index.html) for webscraping-to-notes. ---
**Author:** ![joschmit](https://forum.obsidian.md/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/j/71c47a/32.png) [@joschmit](https://forum.obsidian.md/u/joschmit)\ **Post date:** [July 8, 2021, 11:36am UTC](https://forum.obsidian.md/t/a-starter-vault-for-history-students/19775/4 "2021-07-08T11:36:23Z")
Really impressed with your work, this seems really helpful to get students into Obsidian. I am thinking of building something similar, and of course your project would be a starting point - though I will do it in german. How should I proceed if I use your set-up? Would you mind that I do that? I would put your name in it as the original author and idea giver. Looking forward playing around with that vault. Especially if i get the OCR templater script fixed for me. Cheers for this project! ---
**Author:** ![drgraham](https://forum.obsidian.md/user_avatar/forum.obsidian.md/drgraham/32/8309_2.png) [@drgraham](https://forum.obsidian.md/u/drgraham)\ **Post date:** [July 8, 2021, 6:30pm UTC](https://forum.obsidian.md/t/a-starter-vault-for-history-students/19775/5 "2021-07-08T18:30:05Z")
sure, just fork the repo and then have at it! Re the ocr script, someone left an issue in the repo about getting it working on a Linux box. I don’t have a Linux box to explore that issue with, but - in history at least - I’ve maybe only encountered one student in the last decade using Linux. Good luck! ---
**Author:** ![Rosh](https://forum.obsidian.md/user_avatar/forum.obsidian.md/rosh/32/22999_2.png) [@Rosh](https://forum.obsidian.md/u/Rosh)\ **Post date:** [December 10, 2021, 4:59pm UTC](https://forum.obsidian.md/t/a-starter-vault-for-history-students/19775/6 "2021-12-10T16:59:06Z")
New to using Obsidian in this way. Will this work on a Chromebook with ChromeOS? Seems like it should since Chrome is unix-based. It seems like a great resource for history students. Even if they don’t use Obsidian, the templates provide great examples of how to do research and note-taking and the importance of linking related notes. Thanks for this! ---
**Author:** ![drgraham](https://forum.obsidian.md/user_avatar/forum.obsidian.md/drgraham/32/8309_2.png) [@drgraham](https://forum.obsidian.md/u/drgraham)\ **Post date:** [December 15, 2021, 9:43pm UTC](https://forum.obsidian.md/t/a-starter-vault-for-history-students/19775/7 "2021-12-15T21:43:00Z")
you’re welcome! I don’t know if it’ll all work on a chromebook, as I don’t have one handy, but feel free to modify/adapt as appropriate.