I think it’s my turn to ponder the merits of a single vault versus multiple vaults for different, major focus areas. I have three vaults at the moment:
- A work knowledgebase that I use to capture work-related notes, and things that I learn on the job;
- A Dungeons and Dragons vault where I store notes and resources relating to my DnD games such as research notes, characters’ information, campaign notes, and so on;
- A general notes vault where I capture a variety of notes that don’t fit into the other two categories.
My general notes vault is probably my most active vault.
I wrote a note earlier about an idea that I had about DnD game prep that was based on Sönke Ahrens’ suggestion that we cultivate a habit of making notes about things that interest us, and then link those notes (I understand this to basically be at the core of the Zettelkasten methodology) together as a foundation for later work.
When I captured that note into Obsidian, I found myself torn between adding it to the Dungeons and Dragons vault, or the general notes vault where I already have a body of notes about Obsidian, note-taking, and related topics.
So now I’m debating whether to merge all my vaults into one monolithic vault where my main focus areas (work knowledge, DnD, and others that may arise) are really just distinguished by how they are linked, and categorised.
If I were to merge the contents of the vaults, they’d initially be in folders that I’d copy across to the general notes folder (I wouldn’t use nested vaults, just relocate the files themselves). Over time, though, new notes would be added at the vault’s top-level, making the folder structure largely irrelevant, and difficult to unscramble later.
The only option that I can see addressing this dilemma is a way to cross-reference notes between disparate vaults, if such a thing is even feasible.
