🔖 John Locke’s Method for Common-Place Books (archive)

Make an index page that has all the alphabets listed, with sub-divisions for each alphabet+vowel combination. When a new item is added add the page number it was added on in the corresponding row.

Since its not just alphabetical there are fewer pages you need to check to find what you’re looking for. And, since its not purely chronological there is a higher chance that items with the same prefix are closer together.

Index in one of John Locke’s commonplace books, based on his “new method” (Bodleian Library, Oxford, Ms. Locke f. 18, 110-111).

Looking at this image I see that a single page isn’t dedicated to an alphabet+vowel combination and that it would have a variety of combinations, and thus a variety of topics.

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