In a [[Zettlekasten]] system, "literature" refers to outside sources. "Literature notes" are notes taken directly from these sources. That could include highlights, margin notes, synopses, etc. These are not my ideas but rather the author's ideas, even if captured in my own words. While in a true Zettlekasten each note would capture just one idea, in my system each source has a note (or constellation of notes in the case of books which have a book note and a highlights note). This hub is an index of all literature notes in my notes (with the exception of book notes which can be found in the [[book shelf]] hub). ## my workflows My `./lit` folder stores all literature notes. Subfolders partition types of sources (e.g., books, videos) or import services (e.g., readwise, zotero). Import sources are given their own space for easier control. The subsections below describe how to work with each type of literature in my system. ### books I use the community plugin [[Book Search]] to create a book note and import book metadata for any books I read. I use the community plugin [[Kindle Highlights]] to import highlights. The `book` template includes a wiki-style reference to the highlights note of the same name. Occasionally, I need to change either the name of the book note or the name of the highlights note to match. ### courses After taking a course, write a brief synopsis in the `lit/courses` folder. Notes from the course are expected to be captured in permanent notes throughout my knowledge base. However, the course note can be used to store fleeting notes and reference material. ### readwise [[Readwise Reader]] is the service I use to highlight articles and other content on the web. If I find an article I want to annotate, I import it into Readwise using the web clipper, read and annotate it, and then sync it to Obsidian with the Readwise official community plugin. Highlights from [[Medium]] are also automatically added to Readwise (using a Readwise connector) and can be synced with the plugin. Once synced, I often write a brief synopsis of the article at the top of the note. Readwise appends new highlights and notes from articles to the bottom of the note, so anything I add to the note is preserved after import. ### textbooks Like courses, the notes on textbooks should contain a brief synopsis, fleeting notes, and reference material. Permanent notes should be in the knowledge base. If reading a textbook on the ReMarkable, there is no opportunity to export highlights. However, if reading a chapter from a textbook on Readwise, ==move the file to the textbook folder after importing it==. ### videos Videos can come from YouTube (most common) and other sources around the web. This has been the most challenging. I've tried annotation services to highlight transcripts, but find this to be overly clunky. I'll continue to work on this and update this section once I have an approach. #TODO ### podcasts I haven't stored any podcasts yet, but I imagine I will soon and so expect to define a workflow here. #TODO ### zotero [[base/Zotero|Zotero]] is the service I use for annotating white literature (e.g., peer-reviewed journal articles). I find Zotero to be much better than Readwise at parsing the common two-column PDF format of published research. ## a note on bookmarks I bookmark articles with [[Raindrop.io]]. Very rarely do I mark up these articles when I bookmark them, often I don't even read them all the way through. Instead, I simply want to capture these for later search and retrieval when the content is relevant. I have a widget on my [[🌎 home]] page to display the latest bookmarks.