The zettelkasten (German: "slip box", plural zettelkästen) is a system of note-
taking and personal knowledge management used in research and study.[1]
A zettelkasten consists of many individual notes with ideas and other short pieces
of information that are taken down as they occur or are acquired.[2] The notes may
be numbered hierarchically so that new notes may be inserted at the appropriate
place, and contain metadata to allow the note-taker to associate notes with each
other. For example, notes may contain subject headings or tags that describe key
aspects of the note, and they may reference other notes. The numbering, metadata,
format and structure of the notes is subject to variation depending on the specific
method employed.[2]
A zettelkasten may be created and used in a digital format, sometimes using
personal knowledge management software. But it can be and has long been done on
paper using index cards.
The system not only allows a researcher to store and retrieve information related
to their research, but has also been used to enhance creativity.[2]
n the form of paper index cards in boxes, the zettelkasten has long been used by
individual researchers and by organizations to manage information, including the
specialized form of the library catalog. Coming from a commonplace book tradition,
[3] Conrad Gessner (1516–1565) invented his own method of organization in which the
individual notes could be rearranged at any time. In retrospect, his recommendation
of gluing slips onto bound sheets[4][5] was an innovation in moving from
commonplace books to index cards as a form factor.
The first early modern card index was designed by 17th-century English inventor
Thomas Harrison (c. 1640s). Harrison's manuscript on the "ark of studies"[6] (Arca
studiorum) describes a small cabinet that allows users to excerpt books and file
their notes in a specific order by attaching pieces of paper to metal hooks labeled
by subject headings.[7] Harrison's system was edited and improved by Vincent
Placcius in his well-known handbook on excerpting methods (De arte excerpendi,
1689).[8] Librarian and mathematician Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz was known to have
relied on Harrison's invention in at least one of his research projects.[8]
In 1767, Carl Linnaeus used "little paper slips of a standard size" to record
information for his research.[9] Over 1,000 of Linnaeus's precursors to the modern
index card containing information collected from books and other publications and
measuring five by three inches are housed at the Linnean Society of London.[7]
Later in his own commonplace, under the heading "My way of collecting materials for
future writings" (translated), Johann Jacob Moser (1701–1785) described the
algorithms with which he filled his "card boxes".[2]
The 1796 idyll Leben des Quintus Fixlein by novelist Jean Paul is structured
according to the zettelkasten in which the protagonist keeps his autobiography.[2]
Jean Paul ultimately assembled 12,000 paper scraps into his commonplace books over
the course of his lifetime, but died in 1825, almost a century before the advent of
standardized note cards or box systems which later made it easier to store and
organize them.[10]
Antonin Sertillanges' book The Intellectual Life (1921) outlines in Chapter 7 a
version of the zettelkasten method, although he neither uses the German name nor
gives the method any specific name.[11] The book was published in French and
English in more than 45 editions over the span of 60 years.[12] In it, Sertillanges
recommends taking notes on slips of "strong paper of a uniform size" either self
made with a paper cutter or by "special firms that will spare you the trouble,
providing slips of every size and color as well as the necessary boxes and
accessories". He also recommends a "certain number of tagged slips, guide-cards, so
as to number each category visibly after having numbered each slip, in the corner
or in the middle". He goes on to suggest creating a catalog or index of subjects
with divisions and subdivisions and recommends the "very ingenious system", the
decimal system, for organizing one's research. For the details of this he refers
the reader to Organization of Intellectual Work: Practical Recipes for Use by
Students of All Faculties and Workers by Paul Chavigny [fr].[13] Sertillanges
recommends against the previous patterns seen with commonplace books where one does
note taking in books or on slips of paper which might be pasted into books as they
don't "easily allow classification" or "readily lend themselves to use at the
moment of writing".[11]
Philosopher and intellectual historian Hans Blumenberg (1920–1996) compiled more
than 30,000 cards into his zettelkasten, which now occupy thirty-two conservation
boxes at the German Literature Archive in Marbach. Blumenberg was inspired by the
previous notetaking work and output of Georg Christoph Lichtenberg who used waste
books or sudelbücher as he called them.[10]
One researcher famous for his extensive use of the method was the sociologist
Niklas Luhmann (1927–1998). Luhmann built up a zettelkasten of some 90,000 index
cards for his research, and credited it for enabling his extraordinarily prolific
writing (including over 70 books and 400 scholarly articles).[14] He linked the
cards together by assigning each a unique index number based on a branching
hierarchy.[15] These index cards were digitized and made available online in 2019.
[16] Luhmann described the zettelkasten as part of his research into systems theory
in the essay "Kommunikation mit Zettelkästen".[17]
Other well known zettelkasten users include Arno Schmidt, Walter Kempowski,
Friedrich Kittler, and Aby Warburg, whose works along with those of Paul,
Blumenberg, and Luhmann appeared in the 2013 exhibition "Zettelkästen. Machines of
Fantasy" at the Museum of Modern Literature, Marbach am Neckar.[1]
German writer Michael Ende kept a zettelkasten, and in 1994, a year prior to his
death, he published Michael Endes Zettelkasten: Skizzen und Notizen (translation:
Michael Ende's File-card Box: Drafts and Notes), an anthology of some of his
writing as well as observations and aphorisms from his card file.[18]
While not referred to specifically as zettelkasten by their non-German speaking
users, there is a tradition of keeping similar notes in a commonplace book–like
tradition in other countries. Twentieth-century American comedians Phyllis Diller
(with 52,000 3×5-inch index cards),[19][20] Joan Rivers (over a million 3×5-inch
index cards),[21] Bob Hope (85,000 pages in files),[22] and George Carlin (paper
notes in folders)[23] were known for keeping joke or gag files throughout their
careers. They often compiled their notes from scraps of paper, receipts, laundry
lists, and matchbooks which served the function of waste books. U.S. president
Ronald Reagan kept punchlines for speeches in a card collection.[24]
In the creation of the Great Books of the Western World (1952), which also includes
A Syntopicon, Mortimer J. Adler and many collaborators created a large shared
collection of tagged and indexed cards to collate the ideas and information for
their series.[25][26]
