In the second lecture of David Blight’s Devane Lecture Series 2024 entitled “Can It Happen Here Again? Yale, Slavery, the Civil War and Their Legacies”, he makes a passing mention of historian, professor, and prolific writer Paul Conkin’s office desk and side tables being covered in index cards full of notes. Further, he says that Conkin admonished students that for every hour they spend reading, they should spend an hour in reflection. The comment is followed by a mention that no one does this with the implication that information overload and the pressures of time don’t allow this.

Of course those with a card index or zettelkasten-based reading and note making practice will realize that they’re probably automatically following the advice of this towering figure of American intellectual history as a dint of their note making system.