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March 01, 2005
Commonplace Books
Last week in 611 Beloved Professor (Becky) took a few minutes to explain her methods of categorizing/storing/organizing information, a discussion that while brief was quite illuminating. As part of this system, she explained her commonplace book. Now, I have to say up front that if I had bothered to look it up in the OED in the first place, I might have had one of these a long time ago. But I didn't, so I didn't. The simple answer is that a commonplace book is means to keep references and resources in a common place.
I was first introduced to the commonplace book in my advanced expository writing course as an undergraduate. There we were asked to collect passages or phrases from writing with style we particularly liked. I didn't really get the purpose at the time, except to see it as a way of developing a style of my own, based on the writings I collected in that one place along with my own thoughts on what I liked about each.
This commonplace book idea is different. It's more like a filing system I used to keep back when I was in the business world, when I built my own reference "library" in a series of files (this tactic later led me to better positions where research and technical knowledge were needed, and finally to educating, creating and teaching courses based on the information I had collected and organized) organized by topic, and cross-referenced to related topics and items filed in other places.
In scholarship, it seems the purpose is similar, collecting information organized by topics or ideas, rather than just by authors or books or other items found in databases and indexes. I had been thinking that I needed some system to organize my many notebooks full of notes, summaries, responses, and readings. I have lots of material that I know is "somewhere" but I have begun to lose track of which course included what reading, and that sort of thing. I have been planning to invest a good solid week or so shifting my organization from "by-course" to "by-subject" but have been putting it off because I didn't have a good system to replace the current one in mind.
Now, this simple idea of the commonplace book helps bring a frame for this porject, and makes a ton of sense relative to my prior experience with the value of a personally constructed reference library.
I think I'm starting to take my academic career seriously.
Posted by cageyer at March 1, 2005 10:11 AM
Comments
No matter how you decide to set up your commonplace book, it will soak up time, especially in the time spent setting it up. It's time well spent!
Posted by: senioritis at March 1, 2005 12:47 PM
What if we set up a common place wiki? They're stupidly easy to establish and then we could all cross link.
Posted by: TR at March 1, 2005 05:53 PM
Chris, I've been meaning to do this organization work too. Coming up with a filing system with index, or commonplace book, relatively quickly seems really important.
Do you, or anyone else you know, use Endnote? I've heard that it's "the" program to use, but I haven't actually used it yet and I'm not sure if there is a comparable program that more folks in a "tech" rhetoric program endorse.
Plus, I'm curious as to how one might use Endnote (or comparable) and DevonThink together.
I *really* want to be able to google my brain!!! I know it's in there somewhere, but finding it...that's key!
Posted by: Marcia at March 1, 2005 10:42 PM
Jen Wingard posted a rave for Endnote on her blog in an entry from Feb. 27. There is a link to the site there, and apparently you can have a 30 day free trial.
I heard someone say that Louise Weatherbee Phelps uses this and gives it high marks, but don't know who else has it or how it might work with DevonThink.
Posted by: Chris Geyer at March 2, 2005 08:49 AM