Creating a glossary for terms related to a special area of work

[PR2ndbrain]

What I’m trying to do

Hello everybody,

once again i need a little bit of help

During the last years i gathered a lot of definitions (a few hundred) related to my area of work as a veterinarian. I would like to add those definitions to obsidian. Please keep in mind i just started using obsidian, i am new to markdown and i have no idea about programming! I tried to be as precise as possible but i struggled with the specific terms. I just know stuff about dogs, cats, fishes and birds… !

a definition in my case consists of:

1. the name of the definition and in some cases an abbreviation
2. the definition of the word itself
3. in a lot of cases a paragraph of a regulation where the definition is originating from

example: 1. pain, 2. physical suffering or distress 3. § 1 TierSchG

what i am doing right now

1. create an individual note (Pain) for each definition
2. add the definition itself (physical suffering…) as an alias in the front matter
3. add a tag “definition”
4. created a note called “Definitions” with a dataview query looking for all notes with the tag “definition” and displaying file name in the left column and the alias in the right column
5. the dataview query:

TABLE aliases as Definition FROM #Definitionen 
SORT file.name ASC

the good: i actually have a note that shows all definitions in alphabetical order with the definition in the right side. the simple dataview query works.

the bad / what i am worried about: is that after adding a lot more definitions i will realize that i should have applied the whole process in a different way

what could be improved: is there a better way then just using the alias? should i do it differently alltogether? should i add the reference to the regulation/law in the text of the note or somewhere else? can i display the reference to the regulation/law in a third column?

Things I have tried

• watched youtube videos about adding dictionaries to obsidian
• read forum posts and articles regarding dataview, dictionary plugins etc.

[holroy]

I’m not that into medical stuff, but normally aliases is reserved for other aliases/nicknames for the note in question, e.g. say you have a note on “Blood Cancer”, but in another note you would like to talk about “Leukemia”. Then it would be natural to add “leukemia” to the aliases.

So I would rather have a dedicated property on the definition part, where I possibly would write a succinct description of the thingy. The main body of the note I would use for other descriptions, comments on treatment (or similar), and so on.

Not sure how I would tackle the originating references, but maybe just add that as list of references in the frontmatter? Maybe even as links, to describe the reference in more detail.