Source Type in Personal Knowledge Management

#1

I use TiddlyWiki as personal knowledge management software to store notes on resources I gather from the internet. I have a field called “format” with values like: webpage, article, book, report, blog, podcast, and code. Looking at the new types of resources from recent years, I would like to revise these format types to cover more current ones. For example, an online book, a GitHub repository, or something like the “Scientific Python Lectures” from Scientific Python Lectures — Scientific Python Lectures. Please advise and propose new formats.

Principles for Revising Formats

  • Granularity vs. usability: Too many formats can overwhelm; too few can blur distinctions. Aim for ~12–15 well-chosen categories.
  • Medium + intent: Capture both how the resource is delivered (e.g., video, repo, dataset) and what it’s for (e.g., tutorial, reference, interactive).
  • Digital-native formats: Include modern structures like MOOCs, GitHub repos, and interactive notebooks.
  • Extensibility: Allow new formats to be added without breaking old notes.

What do you think?

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#2

The question shared with Copilot. The answer is

Format Description Example
Webpage General online page, often static or informational Company homepage, Wikipedia entry
Article Published piece, journalistic or academic, usually standalone Nature journal article, Medium post
Book (Print/Online) Long-form structured text, physical or digital Textbook PDF, Kindle eBook
Report / Whitepaper Formal structured document, often institutional or technical UN climate report, industry whitepaper
Blog Informal, serial posts, often personal or thematic Substack newsletter, developer blog
Podcast / Audio Spoken-word audio resource, episodic or standalone Spotify podcast, lecture recording
Video / Lecture Recorded or streamed video content YouTube tutorial, conference keynote
Course / MOOC Structured learning modules online, often multi-part Coursera course, Scientific Python Lectures
Code Repository Hosted source code collections with version control GitHub repo, GitLab project
Notebook / Interactive Executable documents mixing code + narrative Jupyter Notebook, Google Colab file
Dataset Structured data resource for analysis or modeling Kaggle dataset, CSV archive
Slide Deck / Presentation Visual presentation format, often concise PowerPoint slides, conference deck
Reference / Documentation Technical manuals, API docs, or structured guides Python official docs, software manual
Community / Forum Discussion-based resources, collaborative Q&A Stack Overflow thread, Reddit discussion
Tool / App Interactive software resource, often web-based Online calculator, simulation app

What do you think?

#3

@Mohammad can a tiddler only have one of these formats at a time?, and is it the text field that always contains the content?

#4

My only nudge (perhaps a bit selfishly, looking toward future projects?) is that you make this set a superset of the kinds of types recognized within bibtex](Complete list of BibTeX entry types [with examples] - BibTeX.com). These include things like booklet, conference, manual, phdthesis, incollection (meaning contribution to an anthology, etc.) — which may not be useful to you for your current project, but which are part of the same large data-space as whatever new formats you’d like to add.

Academic attempts to survey this terrain, for citation purposes, may be somewhat helpful: Reference List: Electronic Sources - Purdue OWL® - Purdue University

Refnotes is already great, and… if you do more to develop your knowledge management stuff with reference to digital resources, I hope the formats will remain compatible!

#5

I think no! For example a Jupyter book, which contains a book and a GitHub repo.
Yes I use tiddler for type like source, people, journal, idea, …
But here I use this as a field.

#6

Thank you for remind me of BibTeX and latest APA edition. I think these are complete and I can I use them.

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