Tags, or other similar metadata, added to resources in a Personal knowledge management system are not content. They are best used to help you curate resources and can answer questions such as:
- What was written in July 2023? (add a date)
- Where are all the references to books? (add
#class/book) - What am I currently working on? (add
#state/to-develop)
When used as markers for the content of a resource - exactly like keywords - an issue arises where one tag can mean multiple things. Is #philosophy a reference to a note that discusses a philosophy, or is it about philosophy itself.1
There is a difference between tags, notes and tagnotes. The latter are a flavour of note that summarise broad topics. They are similar to a Map of Content in that they bring together information with more context than a single word. Curtis writes,
Tagnotes vs notes
The difference between
#tagnotesandnotesis that notes are summaries of reading and research I’ve been doing while#tagnotesare the connection points between that research.Tagnotes vs tags
When it comes to
#tagsI use those to set the status of a piece of research in my vault. Something I want to summarize gets#tosummarize. If I want#toreadsomething then it gets that tag applied.I also use them to set the type of content. If I have a note on a specific person that note gets the
#peopletag. A note on an application like OmniFocus would get the#apptag. A note on a book gets the#booktag.2
In my system, I do not tag notes with markers of what knowledge is within them. If I am tempted to tag with a concept, I’ll find a way to rewrite my text to use a [[link]] instead. Curtis stores these in a Tags folder and identifies them with a #tagnotes “proper” tag. I’m more likely to treat these as synonymous with Map of Content rather than as another point of friction to track.
Footnotes
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The Difference Between Good and Bad Tags • Zettelkasten Method by Sascha Fast, where tags group notes under a topic, or group notes around an object. ↩
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Obsidian Tagnotes by Curtis McHale ↩