
PoIC: Pile of Index Cards - dredmorbius
http://pileofindexcards.org/blog/cluster/
======
scholia
Love this. I used a similar system in the early 1970s before "upgrading" to
the first of several FiloFaxes.

However, I'd rather read it as a single document than as so many small
files...

~~~
dredmorbius
There is that, though the documentation somewhat resembles a Pile of Index
Cards itself.

I've been following a similar concept myself, including adopting many of the
conventions described by the author of this piece, though not quite to the
extent of edge-marking cards (I'm also not using quad-ruled cards).

I'd been using a time-ordered "dock", though am in the process of organising
one set of cards (associated with ongoing research) into a structure that more
closely resembles the ontology I'm using for that project, as well as some
administrative elements. Essentially:

1\. Planning.

2\. Bibliographic cards. Both obtained and unobtained (materials I'm hoping to
acquire).

3\. Biographic cards. People associated with the topic(s).

4\. Organisational cards.

5\. Open questions -- for research.

6\. Topics -- the project structure itself.

7\. Writings -- various pieces being written based on various subsets of
cards. I'm still thinking of how to dispose of those cards once I'm done with
them.

Cards, boxes, and other elements lend themselves to certain types of
organisation, including edge marks, conventions, colour-coding, striping (talk
to old punch-card hands about deck management policies), etc. It's
interesting.

There are also affordances (and limitations) of card-based information
capture. Search is an obvious compromise, but there's also a much more fluid
capability to create and designate conventions than with software-based
systems. The ablity to rapidly scan a fairly sizeable card deck (100 - 500 or
so cards) beats many electronic formats. The ability to flexibly organise
cards on any given surface (desk, table, floor, wallboard, etc.) is another
element.

I've run across a few further references to card-based research techniques,
including:

* Carl Linnaeus inventing index cards -- as he was engaged in the process of devising his own ontological classification scheme. His was among the first known cases of information overload. [https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/06/090616080137.h...](https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/06/090616080137.htm)

* John McPhee, author, who uses index cards to both find and define the structure of his own works. See "Structure", 2013: [http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2013/01/14/structure](http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2013/01/14/structure)

* Nklaus Luhmann, German sociologist.

* Vladimir Nobokv.

* Garrett Hardin -- his office was an absolute warren of card stacks and boxes, as well as books and papers.

Several of these examples are mentioned in a _Guardian_ column by Oliver
Burkeman:
[https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2009/may/09/health-...](https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2009/may/09/health-
and-wellbeing)

The challenge for me has been finding useful organising and management
principles (and tools), hence casting about for articles.

This one has been posted to HN previously, though the accompanying Flikr
stream rather than the blog.

~~~
scholia
Vladimir Nabokv was my inspiration ;-)

