WHY I MOVED MY COMMONPLACE BOOK FROM PAPER INTO A COMPUTER DATABASE.

My very first commonplace book was a bound book with blank pages. The problem with it was that things went in chronologically as I discovered them which made retrieval a problem. The best classical commonplace books (e.g. those of Thomas Jefferson) were divided into sections so that his political stuff could be kept separate from his botanical/agricultural stuff. My later commonplace books were all three-ring binders which allowed me to move stuff around into different sections and even rearrange the sections over time. This was ducky except that some things fit into more than one category. For example, I might want to keep everything about politics in one place and everything written in Latin in one place. Mini-crisis: where to put something about politics written in Latin? This led me inexorably toward moving my commonplace books into a database -- a project which is not yet complete but keeps me out of the tavern on slow days. The database does not care where a file may be "physically" located within itself. If one identifies a single file with separate identifiers -- e.g. POLITICS and LATIN QUOTES -- then it is appropriately retrieved with its brothers and sisters when that identifier is keyed into the search function. How cool is that!? While I am certain that none of this seems marvelous to those on this Board who are computer sophisticates, I am still struck with awe and wonder by it all.