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Accumulating tabs, saving PDFs, and making bookmarks feels like progress, but we systematically overrate its value. Understanding requires effortful engagement; you are not likely to draw much understanding from a folder of barely-skimmed PDFs. We collect material because it’s easy, and because it quells the anxiety that we’ll never find what we’re looking at again. But really, we’re often just making things worse, burying important materials in tons of secondary matter we just “don’t want to lose.” This notion is in contrast to Knowledge work should accrete. This is a first step to conquer Collector’s Fallacy: to realize that having a text at hand does nothing to increase our knowledge. Instead, we should Write about what you read to internalize texts deeply, because Evergreen note-writing helps reading efforts accumulate. And to help steer ourselves effectively (contra Note-writing practices provide weak feedback), we should process collected materials in short iteration cycles, rather than letting them pile up for long periods. But! Keep in mind that Most texts aren’t worth writing detailed notes about. Often a good compromise is to use spaced repetition to cheaply internalize a few key details; you can come back and write real notes later if the material turns out to be valuable. See e.g. Deciding to remember something with a spaced repetition system is (aspirationally) a lightweight gesture The Collector’s Fallacy • Zettelkasten Method Because ‘to know about something’ isn’t the same as ‘knowing something’. Just knowing about a thing is less than superficial since knowing about is merely to be certain of its existence, nothing more. Ultimately, this fake-knowledge is hindering us on our road to true excellence. Until we merge the contents, the information, ideas, and thoughts of other people into our own knowledge, we haven’t really learned a thing. We don’t change ourselves if we don’t learn, so merely filing things away doesn’t lead us anywhere. Just like photocopying is self-rewarding and addictive, I argue that we fall into the same trap of false comfort when we bookmark web pages and sort the bookmarks into folders or tagged categories. Bookmarking a web page is satisfying because we get rid of the fear of losing access to the information. I get into detail in another post . This is a first step to conquer Collector’s Fallacy: to realize that having a text at hand does nothing to increase our knowledge. We have to work with it instead. Reading alone won’t suffice: we have to create notes, too, to create real, sustainable knowledge. Especially when we start to research something new, Eco recommends we read and highlight texts right after we create copies. If we train ourselves to process photocopied texts soon, we get a feeling of how much we can really handle. Shorter cycles of research, reading, and knowledge assimilation are better than long ones. With every full cycle from research to knowledge assimilation, we learn more about the topic. When we know more, our decisions are more informed, thus our research gets more efficient. If, on the other hand, we take home a big pile of material to read and process, some of it will turn out be useless once we finished parts of the pile. Kidd, A. (1994). The marks are on the knowledge worker. Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, 186–191 The marks which can make a difference to their organisations are on the knowledge workers not on the pieces of paper. This is what it means to inform - to change the form of a person or a device such that they act differently (ideally more effectively) on their environment.

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Nosdesk was perfect for about a year, because it only existed in my head. What happened when real people got hold of it, and an old Greek story about the same mistake.

The British Library’s Topographical Collection of King George III consists of around 40,000 maps, views, atlases and other visual materials. The collection spans the years between 1550 and 1820, with coverage of the entire world, but particular emphasis upon Britain, Western Europe and areas of British influence. George III’s Geographical collection was developed by the king’s librarians around the existing royal map collection begun during the reign of Charles II. Methods of acquisition included purchases and gifts of individual items, as well as wholesale collections (for example, the purchase of the library of Consul Joseph Smith in 1761). Following the King’s death in 1820, the Geographical Collection was divided: the Military Collection was retained and is now in the Royal Library at Windsor; the Topographical Collection was presented to the British Museum (now British Library); the Maritime Collection was sent to the Admiralty but later transferred to the British Library. The Topographical Collection reflects changing impressions of place and space across the 16th–19th centuries through manuscript and printed atlases; architectural drawings and garden plans; maps and records of military campaigns, fortifications, barracks, bridges and canals; records of town and country houses, civic and collegiate buildings; drawn and printed records of antiquities including stained glass, sculpture, tombs, mosaic pavements and brasses; and thousands of drawn and printed views. The collection includes the work of familiar names from Wenceslaus Hollar to Nicholas Hawksmoor, alongside the works of a host of lesser-known artists and amateurs and much anonymous or unidentified material. From 2013 until 2019, the King’s Topographical Collection Cataloguing and Digitisation Project created detailed and searchable catalogue records on our Explore catalogue and high quality digital images which are available here. Users can access specific images on Flickr via the ‘I want this’ tab contained in each item’s corresponding Explore catalogue record. The collection is arranged on Flickr in two main groups, Firstly, a large gallery of 17,000 images holds individual maps and views. Secondly, a number of smaller galleries hold images of individual atlases and other bound volumes. Selected material from the collection can also be viewed and explored on the British Library’s Picturing Places. Subscribe to the Maps and Views blog for information on recent discoveries and developments on the King’s Topographical Collection. Follow us on Twitter at @BLMaps and @BL_Prints to receive updates and highlights. Please let us know how you are using these images, we’d be delighted to hear from you. Sponsors The project has been generously sponsored by trusts and individuals including the American Trust for the British Library, Art Scholars Charitable Trust, Blue Rubicon, Viscountess Boyd Charitable Trust, Christies Education, Coles Medlock Charitable Foundation, Cornwall Heritage Trust, Cumberland and Westmorland Antiquarian and Archaeological Society, Daniel Crouch Rare Books, Dunard Fund, Eccles Centre, Englefield Charitable Trust, Edward and Dorothy Cadbury Trust, Hadfield Trust, John R Murray Charitable Trust, Ken Biggs Charitable Trust, Samuel H Kress Foundation, Langtree Trust, London Historians Ltd, London Topographical Society, Maunby Investment Management Ltd , PH Charitable Trust, Peck Stacpoole Foundation, Pitt Rivers Charitable Trust, Reed Foundation, Sylvia Ioannou Foundation, Swire Charitable Trust, Swinton Charitable Trust, Trefoil Trust, Turtleton Charitable Trust, Cyrus Alai, Caroline and Peter Batchelor, Michael Buehler, Tom Boyd, Richard H Brown, Claire Gapper, William B Ginsberg, Jaime Gonzalez, Martin Halusa, Jerome S Handler, Peter Holland, Tina Holland, Arthur Holzheimer, J Michael Horgan, John Leighfield, Norman Leventhal, Sri Prakash Lohia, Tom and Hilary Lynch, Lynda Partridge, Robert E Pierce, Carolyn Ritchie, David Rumsey, J T Touchton, Tony and Maureen Wheeler, Peter A Woodsford and others who wish to remain anonymous. The development of the King’s Topographical Collection Flickr pages has been generously provided by British Library Labs.

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