Dear colleagues 
As a historian myself, I turned to Obsidian to address my dissatisfaction with knowledge management.
I’ve been using Obsidian for over two years now, and I’ve come up with a formula that satisfies me and, above all, enables me to produce (articles, courses, books).
Like you, I spent almost a year wondering how I could work with Obsidian (very differently from what I was used to).
I don’t claim to have the solution for our work as historians, but I feel I’ve stabilized my work process.
Here are a few thoughts that I hope will echo your own concerns.
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My vault gathers all the informations whatever the use I’m going to make of it (I’m lucky enough to teach subjects that are close to my research objects, but not only).
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I only have two folders.
a. A “references” folder where each document (book, article, historical source) is a file with a standardized name (usually AUTHOR’S NAME (DATE) Title) to constitute a link in the other files that refer to it.
b. A “notes amassées”(“collected notes” in French) folder containing everything else.
These notes are roughly of two kinds themselves
I. atomic notes, which are elements drawn from my readings.
II. MOCs on a specific subject that I feed with links to the atomic notes.
- I only use tags to differentiate between the “natures” of notes in the first category above (“atomic notes”) (and here, we’re going to discuss a method, which I think is typically historical).
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#event: a short note describing a specific event, the title of which can be integrated into a MOC. They are deliberately short and have a date at the end of the title (“Publication of (…) in 1965”)
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#Things: as a good historian of the technology, things play an important role in my work. The #thing tag therefore describes an object, a system, etc. It’s also a short note, full of links to other notes with passages written in the note as well.
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#Person: the biography entry is very useful in my opinion (after all, history is made up of actors). These are cards on the model of #things but for humans
(I like a lot the “aliases” because I can entitled a note “Foucault Michel” and create an alias “Michel Foucault” to use it as a link in others notes). -
A flurry of untagged notes that are ideas, quotes (so with the link to the source whether it’s an article, a book or a historical source). Inside, text. If the text is bold and italicized, it’s a personal thought. I didn’t feel the need to create two new types of notes to separate the personal thoughts from the factual elements taken from the readings.
- All these notes are densely interlinked, and I also make extensive use of the foreclosure function: ![[Title]], which reveals the content of the note instead of just the link.
It’s this Obsidian function in particular that has helped me evolve in my practice. At first, I had the fantasy of creating atomic notes that I could use as is to write a few things (by copying and pasting notes already taken), then I realized that this wasn’t possible because the way the note is written always requires that it be taken up again to integrate it into a new text (a course, an article, etc.).
Today, I realize that Obsidian allows me to manage “knowledge” and not really “notes” in the sense of “bits of text”.
That’s why my writing process with Obsidian has changed.
- Writing with Obsidian:
To write with Obsidian, I roughly build a new Moc with the title of the course, article or chapter being written.
I integrate the necessary notes by foreclosure ( with ![[Title]]) and I write on this basis, leaving, once I’m satisfied, the “hidden link” to the note that was used for writing (with %% Link %%).
So, you’ll tell me that I’m constantly rewriting. Yes, but I don’t see how else to do it, and it’s pretty easy and gives good results. Courses and articles are rewrites of notes previously taken. After all, that’s what we’ve been doing in other forms since before we started working with Obsidian, isn’t it?
Once my draft is deemed “satisfactory”, I export to Word and finalize outside Obsidian.
- Some final thoughts
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On rereading this, I realize that it must not be very clear (and writing in French-English
It’s a personal method, and I think the most important thing is to test it and stabilize it. I’m approaching 2,000 references, 10,000 “collected notes”, and I’m quite serene: I’m able to produce, and I think this organization is sustainable. Everything’s going well. -
I’m more of a gardener than an architect (to take two notions that are popular in the small galaxy of PKM enthusiasts): I go back over my notes, modify them, merge or separate them when necessary. I originally chose Obisidan for its ability to update the link to a note when you change its title. I still find this absolutely brilliant, as it ensures that you can evolve your system without fear of being blocked.
Looking forward to hearing from you!
Benjamin