parent:: Personal Knowledge Management (PKM)
#self/life-optimization/org-tools
#self/life-optimization/organization/PKM
An idea library is a personal virtual repository for collecting useful digital content created by others. This includes content which is intended for consumption at a later date, for future reference, posterity, inspiration, or other purposes. Examples of the types of content that can be saved include bookmarks of articles, websites, images, pdfs, audio files, videos.
Whereas a second brain contains processed information, summarized in one's own words and condensed into Atomic Notes, an idea library holds source material itself (or links to it) for reference purposes.
Maintaining an idea library allows for easy access to inspirational thoughts and ideas. A properly curated idea library should foster inspiration and encourage learning.
There are several tools and services available that can be used to implement an idea library, some more conducive to this purpose than others. Most of them are marketed as bookmark managers. Some of these include:
For my idea library, I use Raindrop.io, which I have synced to various services using IFTTT. More information can be found in Learning Workflow.
The best tools for building an idea library include the following features.
The ability to archive, or create a permanent copy of websites that are bookmarked in it. This ensures that the content will be available in the future, even if the website eventually becomes defunct.
The ability to organize via tags in order to quickly find content in the future without dealing with browsing through endless folders.
Being able to search through documents and articles proves highly useful when trying to locate information later. Less useful is search which only uses bookmark titles and tags as reference.
In case of issues in the future, full backup functionality is a great feature to have.
Integration with other tools makes maintaining a conceptual library even easier, as you can automatically bookmark articles you save elsewhere. Additionally, the tool used should provide a browser plugin to support highlighting and bookmarking.
Functionality which allows for highlighting portions of article text and importing them are very helpful when trying to remember and summarize key concepts of a particular idea.
There is no right or wrong way to curate a collection within an idea library. The best method will be whatever works for you. Personally, I tend to bookmark and highlight anything I find remotely interesting. Everything I bookmark or highlight initially goes into an inbox folder by default. I then periodically visit my inbox and take the time to organize what I've saved by tags and into folders The folder I have correlate roughly to topics. For instance, I have a folder for "professional & career development". I rely on tags to provide much of the context and details. I also tag bookmarks for articles I intend to read later with #readlater. That way I can quickly view what's on my reading list and remove the tag once I've read the article.