Where does / doesn't a JD index system shine in a knowledge workers personal library?

10-19 Concepts 11 Core Concepts
1

First, if this is obviously the wrong place for me to post this, forgive me and correct me - I do talk about ‘tools’ but I do mean for this to be at a conceptual level… I just need to start somewhere a little bit concrete before the mush dribbles out of my ears.

Context

I’ve been looking at all the stuff that needs a librarian to sort out, and being the only available person, I have been thinking about how to do it and what “tools” I need.

By tools, I am not looking for specific technical recommendations, but rather approach, methods, and particularly where JD Index shines and, perhaps where it lacks. Reference management in papers is an obvious case where a dedicated tool might be called for.

Given the context of an individual knowledge worker engaged in reading, writing, researching, developing materials for work, and concerned with managing sources and resources.

Note that whilst I’ve simplified by talking of papers, I am very liberal in my interpretation of ’source’ including traditional books and papers, web-articles, narrative interviews, session notes, podcasts, 17th century Japanese poets, conversations, notes from reflections, my journals, and so on - whilst many of these are not ‘cited’ in a traditional sense in my practice I like to be able to trace back to context and build on it.

Just to start getting a head around it I’ve produced a list of tools that i associate with Libraries (excluding membership and borrowing stuff.)

Reference Catalogue

  • Nature: A reference catalogue is a comprehensive listing of all materials available in a personal collection, providing bibliographic information about each item.
  • Primary Question Answered: “What resources do I have in my collection, and where can I find them?”
  • Use Case: Helps maintain an organized overview of all owned resources, making it easier to discover and access materials when needed.

Resource Library

  • Nature: A resource library is a curated collection of various digital resources, such as ebooks, articles, videos, and other media, organized for easy access and use.
  • Primary Question Answered: “What digital resources do I have available for my work, and how are they organized?”
  • Use Case: Provides a centralized repository for all digital assets, allowing for efficient retrieval and use in research, writing, and other projects.

Reference Manager

  • Nature: A reference manager is a software tool designed to collect, organize, and manage bibliographic references and citations.
  • Primary Question Answered: “How can I organize my references and citations for easy use in my writing and research?”
  • Use Case: Facilitates the management of bibliographic data, enabling easy citation and bibliography creation in various writing projects, while also storing and organizing digital copies of resources.

Library Index

  • Nature: A library index is a tool that helps locate specific information within a single work or a collection of works.
  • Primary Questions Answered: “Where can I find specific information or topics within this book or document?”
  • Use Case: Useful for quickly navigating large texts to find particular terms, topics, or subjects without reading the entire document.

Summary of context

For an individual managing their own digital resources, each tool addresses specific organizational needs:

  • Reference Catalogue: Provides an overview of all resources in the personal collection.
  • Resource Library: Organizes and stores various digital assets for easy access and use.
  • Library Index: Helps locate specific information within individual documents.
  • Reference Manager: Manages bibliographic references and supports citation needs in writing and research.

Questions

  • What do you encompass exclusively in the JD Index?
  • What functions do you combine?
  • What don’t you find to be of help?
  • In what cases is a JD Index the wrong approach?
  • What have I missed / should I be thinking about?

1 Like
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Hi @Myles, this is a great question I am also thinking about a lot.
A few quick clarification questions to start with:

why the mention of ‘digital’ under resource library, but not under Reference Catalogue? The primary question answered seems so similar I’m not quite sure why there’s a difference. Could you give a bit more info on what you see each of these being? Maybe some examples?

I have the feeling that most software tools in this area would tend try to do most of 1,2 and maybe 4 in one. Alternatively, the role of 1 and 2 can be fulfilled by the file system.

I can say that the wrong approach with JD for this is probably to store and mention all your assets/resources in the JD. The things to mention in your JDex would be which reference manager to use or which software you use to keep an index of content. I.e. which program do you need to open to enter search terms to retrieve PDFs? And you’d also have in your JDex the templates and workflows/procedures you use for downloading, renaming, filing resources (i.e. mention the fact that you use Zotero’s browser plugins, or another browser addon for archiving pages, or a script that renames files automatically …)

3

I am avoiding software discussion at the moment partly to understand at a conceptual level, and partly because of my own tendencies to go down rabbit holes - and also, under the banner of combination, push tools beyond their natural or appropriate boundaries.

Here’s a separate list: Current tool set

Why digital? Slip of the pen, really - or maybe because some (of my) reference books are not digital, though almost all are – and because I’m not talking about an insurance style of inventory, but rather stuff I use to produce or enable work.

4

Yes - this is nub of the matter, perhaps:

  • case A: JD as a taxonomy, with policies and stuff on the AC. level, with files on disk using the id level
  • case B: JD as taxonomy, the file on disk, + a corresponding entry in the index with the metadata of the file (including the location(s).
  • case C: library index would apply a taxonomy to a list items with their metadata including search terms and even a table of contents of the item-

But why is it wrong to use JD Index as an index?

File filed AND note created with meta-data in the index? - #5 by Myles - written after re-reading part of the ‘manual’ and having an aha moment.

5

The other thing about tools - I know I have a tendency to overcomplicate, to look at systems rather than the simple solution.

Couldn’t I just do this in Bear alongside all the rest - ok not the stuff bookends does (managing all the references - citations - bibilographies in outputs, but given that I can bring in the metadata from Bookends and Highlights, couldn’t I do the rest?

It isn’t going to have the magic search capabilities of Devonthink pro, for instance, but it may help me lay my hand on that thingymejig I made for suchandsuch and can repurpose for whojimmyflip.

and for that I need to think in really simple, minimal viable models.

6

This is a complex question, and I fear my replies will tend to balloon to great length, so I’ll just caveat all my replies with the note that I do not attempt complete coverage in any one reply.

Totally can relate to both these points. However, I find I can’t grasp it at the conceptual level so I think I will go back and forth between conceptual and concrete.

Is the distinction between Reference Catalogue and Resource Library that physical assets have an obvious location (as ‘resources’) but digital assets need a way of accessing them? so the resource library is a kind of digital portal to be able to retrieve them?

I suspect, as I think you reflect on later, that in the end these two will mostly be combined in one interface. The reference catalogue will contain a ‘location’ property. In the case of physical assets, that’s the ‘shelf location’; in the case of digital assets, it could be a URL to open the content (e.g. a file:// link to the pdf). The ‘resource library’ as such is invisible to the end user, but you as librarian do need to file it somewhere that you can later access via hyperlink.

I said:

But I also said:

That ‘thinking about’ entails that I am actually contradicting myself, and experimenting with doing it inside my JD. It looks something like this:

00.00_index/
    40-49 My Projects
            41_My writing Projects/
                41.23 Biography of Eric Arthur Blair.md
    90-99 Libary/
        92_Fiction.md    contains a note about where I keep the key for the safe containing first editions and other valuables
...
90-99 Library
    92_Fiction/
        Orwell, George. 1984: A novel. Secker & Warburg: 1949.md
        Orwell, George. Nineteen Eighty-four.epub

My main way of interacting with the entire system is through a full-text search. E.g. what a notetaking app like Bear or Obsidian would provide. As such, a search might return two results: a mention of ‘Orwell 1984’ in the notes to my biography project, and the record itself.

The record, as a structured text file, could contain the location of my physical copy of the book (first edition, wow!). The epub is the final digital asset that my operating system can open directly.

‘Don’t put this in JD’ firstly means don’t put it in your JD index. I.e. under 00.00.

The structured text file contains everything I would need to cite this work. However, then my citation manager needs to be able to get that information into my writing software. So for people for whom this is a real job would probably want to use a dedicated reference manager. Their 90-99 could then just be a handful of text files noting which software they use for which collection (i.e. separate ones for academic articles and for podcasts and youtube videos). But in that case, it becomes so sparse that this information could just be put in the Johnny Decimal index (under 00.00), and they wouldn’t need a folder 90-99 Library at all.

7

Yes, I think so. And I think my post above is moving along similar lines.

Yeah, I think this will work. Say you are working on a project thingymejig for suchandsuch. This gets an ID in your system. In a text file in/named for that ID, you mention a resource and you paste in the unique ID which [zotero/Bookends/Mendeley/Etc] generates.

Now you’re working on project jiggermathing for soandso. You remember you found something useful at thingymejig, so with a combination of search terms you quickly find the text file with the ID, allowing you to find it in your Reference Manager.

8

Thanks Hans - I’m still digesting your comments and so this won’t be a direct response, more of a continuation of musing - this time with some tools context.

In Tana I had supertags for source and resource - the resource was something I’d use with clients and would likelily include one or more sources.

Both of these could be referenced in the client session notes and elsewhere, in literature notes, for instance.

So I could ask questions such as “what did I use with them that time?” “have I done this before?” - or “I know I did this a few weeks ago, what’s a good resource to use as development” - and of Course in my Zettelkasten I can see what I was reading when I was thinking various thoughts and so on.

In this new system I am thinking that my reference manager can act as my source list - I use that to give the reference on reference notes and the like. And I am feeling pretty good about that

When it comes to resources (things that I develop and can be re-used, drawing on various sources) I’m wondering about - do I need to have a separate DAM - and they are all digital - or some kind of catalogue (such as DevonThink ) or would a well formed index sitting over the file system be perfectly adequate? For the linkages I probably will need a resource something to link into the session records - (we used this tool today)

Then the other side are sources/resources I use to make things - gathered from wherever - currently a mess, but could be organised in a read later app -(I use Reader/readwise) or in Zotero (I started with Zotero when it was essentially a web-clipping extension of Firefox) , or clip to bear.

I’m giving the implementation thoughts a break whilst I consider the taxonomy - getting the files on disk organised is essential, and the taxonomy will serve all purposes.

9

Yes - so this is the split I have - when is a reference list not suitable as a catalogue - think DAM - can all digital assets (including stuff I’ve made that could be re-used/re-purposed) be a simple list of references - the artefacts themselves can be stored as attachments within Bookends, for instance - and how is this superior to filling them and using something like Hookmark (is that the name) to manage the links into the bear note? - but then I think, I still have to organise stuff - so lets work on that a bit more and think about timplementation later

10

Hi Myles, I’m offering my perspective as a seasoned (read: grey-haired) academic currently serving as an upper level administrator at my university. I have found the JD system very helpful in organizing my admin work, mostly because of the way it links information stored in many different places in my index. Now that I have a set up, it also helps me figure out when to say yes vs. no to the constant stream of requests for assistance/collaboration/leadership of new initiatives that come through my inbox and meetings. It has hugely improved my sense of control over my work, both inputs and outputs.

For a time I thought I would use JD to (re)organize my research & teaching work as well, hoping for similar gains. But I ultimately abandoned that project for the most part. When it comes to my library, there is simply too much use overlap between sources and I could not come up with any set of areas/categories/IDs that made sense. I am a long-time user of the reference manager Zotero and I use its ‘location in archives” field to note whether I own the physical book or journal, have a PDF of the source stored in my digital files, have detailed notes on the source in my notes files, etc. Zotero also allows you to put a single reference in multiple ‘collections’ (folders) without creating duplicate source records. The collections approach is antithetical to the JD approach of unique IDs for each thing, but still feels right for organizing a library. I assume other reference managers have similar functionality and it could also be accomplished with a spreadsheet or simple database.

Even though my library ‘system’ is distinct from the rest of my JD work ‘system’, I think there are parallels

  1. work things organized in my JDEX (one ID per thing);
  • things in my library with Zotero as my index (one Zotero source reference corresponding to each individual book on my shelf, dvd in my media cabinet,PDF in my digital files named by standard author-date-title notations)
  1. Areas and categories showing relationships among my work things, with the single most important relationship (Area/Category) driving where individual things belong;
  • collections in Zotero showing relationships of individual library items to my research projects, teaching, etc., with no requirement of determining the single most important relationship when adding items to collections.
1 Like
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Thank you @njmatch3 - this resonates very strongly for me.

I am in the process of adopting Bookends over Zotero (which I have used since it was a wee Firefox plug-in) in much the same way as you describe. I find them pretty analogous in practice, just BE is better integrated with the rest of the Mac tools that I am using, and well, just works a bit better on Mac generally, and I can still use the Zotero browser extension to grab things
–I’ll review more closely to see if I am missing anything as I set up Bookends (currently in progress)

Follow-up questions (they are overlapping and can be seen as prompts or alternatives, not actual well formed questions to answer!)

  • do you use Zotero or something else to manage your teaching resources/materials? --such as a Digital Asset Manager?
  • do you have teaching materials, such as lecture notes, handouts or things that you produce/use as resources in your teaching?
  • do you use non-text materials - audio-visual?
  • do you reference personal communications and interviews?
  • where do you put your output -both the published and working documents for the work you produce? (as in Zotero or filing system + JDEX)
  1. work things organized in my JDEX (one ID per thing);
    I love the implication that there is work and then there is the real stuff of life!

I am convinced to use a Reference Manager, as a reference manager and as the index/catalogue for sources and I am in the process of re-organising all of the - I’m now focusing on how best to organise my resources and outputs. I could just use the reference manager - but would I be missing something over using a tool such as DevonThink or a DAM tool?

12

Hi Myles, responses to your bullets

  • teaching materials that are sources are in Zotero-I have collections for each class
  • my outputs (lectures, handouts, exams) are in my jdex/files - one ID per class, and here I break the rule and have nested subfolders for handouts, lectures, etc. I’m thinking about converting to the exten-the-end (AC.ID+) approach/
  • Occasionally: they are in my Zotero system
  • Administrative outputs (policy documents, campus presentations, etc) are in my JDEX/files; so are my research notes. stuff I’ve published also goes in the MyPubs collection in Zotero. I’m not actively doing scholarly research right now, but created a work in progress ID in my JDEX, where I plan to use the extend the end approach or nested folders for each project. My JDEX will tell me where any/all resources relevant to a project are stored. But I write in scrivener so most stuff will likely get imported there.
    Hope this is helpful. The key for me was the JDEX- one ID per thing lets me list all relevant sources, notes, etc for a project across multiple tools or locations.