Organizing notes taken from readings

[tavor 668]

I'm relatively new to EN and have a few hundred notes so far. I'm trying to minimize notebooks and rely more on tags as they seem to be far more powerful and flexible than notebooks. Only have 2 notebooks as of now - Inbox and Main.

 

A specific area I could use some input on is organizing my notes on books. When reading non-fiction books aimed at skill development (e.g., improving archery skills), I often take notes. In EN, this might result in, for example, 50 EN notes.

 

What are some ways to organize these EN notes? I like having a table of contents note which provides links to all the notes from a particular book. That seems preferable to having a tag for a book title or author, which doesn't allow for organization of the notes within a particular tag. Plus, using book titles or authors as tags can result in too many tags.

 

And my thinking is I can create tags for particular topics discussed in a book that may also be discussed in other books that I've read and taken notes on. For example, if I've read several archery books, I can create a tag for 'stance' or 'sight alignment' that lets me see all the notes on that particular topic. The same tags would also apply to non-book based notes - for example, notes based on my personal observations or practice sessions.

 

What about using the note title to organize these notes? Including the author or book title in every note seems like it could be cumbersome, plus it reduces the number of descriptive words I could otherwise put in the note title. I like the potential that using note titles has for reducing the need for dozens or hundreds of tags, but not sure how best to take advantage of this possibility.

 

Any thoughts on the foregoing or other ideas on organizing notes based on books/readings?

[Candid 167]

I think your ideas sound good. The only thing I'd want to keep is to put the title and author in each note if you do them separately. That way if years later you read this note, you'll know where it came from. You might also want to take cover shots of the books, as sometimes I remember books by color of the cover over title or author. 

 

I'm afraid I do the reverse and each book I take notes on has long, and cumbersome notes that cover the whole book. Your plan sounds good. 

[tavor 668]

I think your ideas sound good. The only thing I'd want to keep is to put the title and author in each note if you do them separately. That way if years later you read this note, you'll know where it came from. You might also want to take cover shots of the books, as sometimes I remember books by color of the cover over title or author. 

 

I'm afraid I do the reverse and each book I take notes on has long, and cumbersome notes that cover the whole book. Your plan sounds good. 

I was thinking I'd put the Title and Author in the table of contents (TOC) note for the book. Including the cover is a good idea, thanks.

 

I see your point about title/author in each note because even with my TOC note organization, there is no obvious way to trace back from the note to which book it came from. Unless EN has a feature that allows you to search for notes that contain a link to the note in question? If it does, I could use that feature to trace a note of unknown origin back to the TOC for the book the note came from.

[gazumped 11,667]

Sounds to me like you're over-thinking this.  If I understood you correctly,  each note (of many notes) will be a significant passage from various books about one or another subject.

 

So.  I'd set up a tag for each book - "Archery_for_the_inept" or whatever,  and make my first note the full beans on author,  title,  cover picture,  ISBN etc.  Then that and each subsequent note I took I'd tag with the book.

 

When adding a title to my notes I would use a standard,  easily remembered format like <date><topic><comments/ keywords>

 

Date may be irrelevant,  but the other elements are to capture any keywords that are not in the content.  Remember Evernote has a killer search function, so 'stance' - if that's how it's referred to in all the books - may be repeated in the text anyway.  It's reasonably unusual,  so whatever other notes you acquire,  a search for 'stance' will get you all the notes,  from any book,  that mention the subject.  You can even save the search as another quick way to find that information.  

 

But maybe you use a recurve bow and the content is all about compound bows.  So your title could be stance - compound so you can identify the specific note easily if it is listed in a search.  If you need to come back to specifics later,  "intitle:stance intitle:recurve" will find only those notes.

 

Lots of experienced users don't use additional notebooks unless they have to - for local only or shared notebooks forinstance - and rarely use tags.  Being smart with titles will get you a long way - but you do need to be willing to experiment.  After your first 100 or so notes you'll probably know exactly how you should have constructed the titles...

 

(It should be easy to tag each note because after a click in the tag field and an 'a' the rest should autosuggest.)

[Wordsgood 526]

Hm, I think this might be the first time I disagree with you, Gazumped. I think it depends on specifically why the OP wants to keep such detailed book notes.

Tavor, are you using EN to catalogue your books? If so, I'd recommend investing a moderate sum in book collecting software. I purchased Book Collectrz last fall. They have come out with a new subscription system, but that's only if you want to get all the major updates included at a cheaper rate. I just went with the base purchase. It include sections and fields for just about everything you might need, including reading notes.

If you still want to go with EN, you might consider using the ISBN and/or LOC number in your notes, to use later as search option.

Cheers!

[tavor 668]

Sounds to me like you're over-thinking this.  If I understood you correctly,  each note (of many notes) will be a significant passage from various books about one or another subject.

 

So.  I'd set up a tag for each book - "Archery_for_the_inept" or whatever,  and make my first note the full beans on author,  title,  cover picture,  ISBN etc.  Then that and each subsequent note I took I'd tag with the book.

 

When adding a title to my notes I would use a standard,  easily remembered format like <date><topic><comments/ keywords>

 

Date may be irrelevant,  but the other elements are to capture any keywords that are not in the content.  Remember Evernote has a killer search function, so 'stance' - if that's how it's referred to in all the books - may be repeated in the text anyway.  It's reasonably unusual,  so whatever other notes you acquire,  a search for 'stance' will get you all the notes,  from any book,  that mention the subject.  You can even save the search as another quick way to find that information.  

 

But maybe you use a recurve bow and the content is all about compound bows.  So your title could be stance - compound so you can identify the specific note easily if it is listed in a search.  If you need to come back to specifics later,  "intitle:stance intitle:recurve" will find only those notes.

 

Lots of experienced users don't use additional notebooks unless they have to - for local only or shared notebooks forinstance - and rarely use tags.  Being smart with titles will get you a long way - but you do need to be willing to experiment.  After your first 100 or so notes you'll probably know exactly how you should have constructed the titles...

 

(It should be easy to tag each note because after a click in the tag field and an 'a' the rest should autosuggest.)

If I create a tag for every book title, I'll end up with dozens of tags just for book titles, which is why I was leaning against going that route. Also, a book title tag doesn't, in and of itself, lend itself to organization within the notes taken from a particular book. Obviously a TOC as I suggested above would handle that, but still leaves the issue of lots of tags.

 

Good info on using note content searches and saved searches - that probably eliminates the need for extensive topic tagging.

 

Hm, I think this might be the first time I disagree with you, Gazumped. I think it depends on specifically why the OP wants to keep such detailed book notes.

Tavor, are you using EN to catalogue your books? If so, I'd recommend investing a moderate sum in book collecting software. I purchased Book Collectrz last fall. They have come out with a new subscription system, but that's only if you want to get all the major updates included at a cheaper rate. I just went with the base purchase. It include sections and fields for just about everything you might need, including reading notes.

If you still want to go with EN, you might consider using the ISBN and/or LOC number in your notes, to use later as search option.

Cheers!

No, I'm not using EN to catalog books. I'm looking to organize the notes I've taken from books I've read. 

[gazumped 11,667]

Hm, I think this might be the first time I disagree with you, Gazumped. I think it depends on specifically why the OP wants to keep such detailed book notes.

Tavor, are you using EN to catalogue your books? If so, I'd recommend investing a moderate sum in book collecting software. I purchased Book Collectrz last fall. They have come out with a new subscription system, but that's only if you want to get all the major updates included at a cheaper rate. I just went with the base purchase. It include sections and fields for just about everything you might need, including reading notes.

If you still want to go with EN, you might consider using the ISBN and/or LOC number in your notes, to use later as search option.

Cheers!

 

Right.  Notebooks at 20 paces. My Seconds will be calling upon you,  sir!

 

Fair point tho - I use a book cataloging app myself which scans ISBNs to grab the title,  summary,  details etc.  I send the backups from that to Evernote just in case the 'phone crashes - which it has a couple of times.

 

As the OP just pointed out though I was reacting to the request to catalogue comments/ content rather than 'just' books..

 

-And to answer @tavor,  I'd think the number of book titles would be less than the total number of tags required for content.  Do you really need a contents list or links to the content for each book?  Save some searches as your contents list,  so you can turn up all notes for a specific subject at the click of a mouse.  Any new notes will appear there without having to set up a link to them because of the title or content.  Your saved searches will be available somewhere on any client,  and you can add new searches as required.  You could even set up some searches for information you haven't clipped yet,  as a reminder to add that later...

[Wordsgood 526]

Lol. I don't believe I'll accept that challenge Sir Gazumped...'cause I know I'd lose!

p.s. I'm a girl.

[gazumped 11,667]

Lol. I don't believe I'll accept that challenge Sir Gazumped...'cause I know I'd lose!

p.s. I'm a girl.

 

Axshully I wouldn't take bets on me in a fair fight either.  Anyway I'm pretty sure the forum rules wouldn't allow any gauntlet-throwing or jousting.

 

Lol  

[Wordsgood 526]

Darn, you're probably right!

Lol. I don't believe I'll accept that challenge Sir Gazumped...'cause I know I'd lose!

p.s. I'm a girl.

Axshully I wouldn't take bets on me in a fair fight either. Anyway I'm pretty sure the forum rules wouldn't allow any gauntlet-throwing or jousting.

Lol

[chirmer 567]

Add me to the list of people who make a tag for each book. So my sidebar isn't cluttered up, I nest them all under their "book" tag. Every note that has to do with a book gets the book tag, and then the tag for the specific title. Depending on the author, I might also make a tag for the author as well, such as ray_bradbury, if I know I'm gonna read more than one book by them. I also use tags like fiction, nonfiction, fantasy, self_help, etc. as I oftentimes like to pull up all of the notes for a specific category of the type of books I read. 

 

I usually have very few notes per book. I try to keep to one note for general book notes, like tips or plot summary (usually by chapter, and tagged with summary). I then have one note for each quote I like, which I also tag with, yep, you guessed it -- quote. Sometimes I'll also tag quotes with descriptors, like inspiration or motivation. 

 

Because I keep down on the number of notes, simply clicking the book's title tag suffices for me with regards to using the information I've gathered. If you want to have a load of notes, you can always do this, and then after you've finished a book, create a table of contents note where you link each note in the order you like. 

 

This lets me, say, pull up book + quote + inspiration, or ray_bradbury + book + summary, or many other combos based on the tags I've set. I work at a library, so I've got quite a few books sorted this way, and it works really well for me, but of course, YMMV! I hope you find a solution that works for you

[tavor 668]

Add me to the list of people who make a tag for each book. So my sidebar isn't cluttered up, I nest them all under their "book" tag. Every note that has to do with a book gets the book tag, and then the tag for the specific title. 

Nested tags is perfect, thanks! Lets me associate each note with the book it came from without having to include the title in every note and without creating a cluttered tag list.

 

This is also perfect for tags related to specific topics in one or more books. Sticking with the earlier example, I could have an 'archery' parent tag and nest archery-related subject tags, such as 'stance', within it. Though as gazumped points out, titling can help limit the # of tags, but still, it would be nice to have tags for frequently referenced topics. Saved searches would accomplish the same task, but a nested tag doesn't seem to have any drawbacks relative to a saved search.

 

Why do you tag every book note with 'book'? Why not just the title tag? You still have the benefit of all your title tags nested under 'book' without having to apply a useless second tag (i.e., 'book') to every note. I say it's 'useless' because when would you ever want to search on that tag as opposed to a title tag?

[chirmer 567]

 

Add me to the list of people who make a tag for each book. So my sidebar isn't cluttered up, I nest them all under their "book" tag. Every note that has to do with a book gets the book tag, and then the tag for the specific title. 

Nested tags is perfect, thanks! Lets me associate each note with the book it came from without having to include the title in every note and without creating a cluttered tag list.

 

This is also perfect for tags related to specific topics in one or more books. Sticking with the earlier example, I could have an 'archery' parent tag and nest archery-related subject tags, such as 'stance', within it. Though as gazumped points out, titling can help limit the # of tags, but still, it would be nice to have tags for frequently referenced topics. Saved searches would accomplish the same task, but a nested tag doesn't seem to have any drawbacks relative to a saved search.

 

Why do you tag every book note with 'book'? Why not just the title tag? You still have the benefit of all your title tags nested under 'book' without having to apply a useless second tag (i.e., 'book') to every note. I say it's 'useless' because when would you ever want to search on that tag as opposed to a title tag?

 

I live for nested tags I have over 100 generic tags, nested within roughly 20 parent tasks. And I tag them with book because, like in my example, I might want to pull up inspirational book quotes, but not necessarily just by certain authors or from certain books. If I decide to design a poster off an inspirational book quote, I can cmd + click book and inspiration and quote and voila, they're all at my fingertips! I try to limit how I do things in Evernote to as few ways as possible. Something I struggled with when I started using Evernote was trying to utilize all of the neat and cool things it does... but then when it came to finding something, I had 1694192834 ways to go about doing it, and I froze. So I pretty much find stuff by searching and tagging, and that's it. I use saved searches for pulling up info I frequently access but the search is a pain to execute on a regular basis, but otherwise I just tag it.