Outline vs Map or, Both?

I am studying a book and I want to create a tinderbox to help my understanding and create new thoughts.  So far, my strategy is to make a map for each chapter.  I love the visual nature of building a map— it helps to see how the concepts and ideas fit together.  However, if I build a map, I don't have the hierarchy of an outline.  Is there a way to get the best of both worlds?  

Map View


Outline View


Suggested Prototypes

What prototypes would you recommend? I'm thinking:
- book notes
- people
- quotes
- references
- my thoughts

Suggestion for quotes
What is the best way to keep the notes and quotes linked to the reference material?  Should every note link to a reference?  Or should, every note contain all of the bibliography fields?

I would be eager to hear any other thoughts on how you use TBX to help you on a research project.

Does anyone have a book study .tbx that you can share as a model?

Here is my suggestion (or, what I am doing right now):

Give every author a container. If you are reading a number of books from the same author, still, separate  the Titles of the books in the Author container with another container.  
Separate the chapters of the books with a Separator.

So, when you are reading Book1 of Woody Allan, you open the Container Book1 in a tab. The sb will open until you finish that book. You work on that book; as deep as you want; draw diagrams b/N ideas, chapters, etc....

If the chapters are very complex and will be spending weeks on them, you might open a container to them too.

Here is my note:


Right now, I am reading Hicks Chapter 2: so, here is how it looks in the Map view.



Indeed, the strategy is all up to you. And, you see that I am not consistent with my Containers and Separators. I sometimes put the chapters as Containers, sometimes as Separators. If you see a book with separators, that means, I have finished the book; I have flattened it from a Container to a Separator. Most of the books had a lot of containers in them when I were reading them. When I finish reading them, I flatten the containers to compare ideas in each of the chapters in one map (you can also use agents for this purpose; but, this is just me).

1. The ability Zoom in: that is, I want to be deep into the content; focus on the chapter I am reading now. In Xmind, they call this property Digin. You Digin into it. I use the Tab and the Containers to Digin into the chapter. In this first stage, the Containers are very useful. They are the curtains to block all the distraction around.

2. Ability co compare and contrast., so that I will not be lost in the details. You have to do this task after you finish the digging in process.

The compare and contrasting of the idea is done by:  using agents; and, by removing Containers after you finished reading the chapters--flattening them into Separators.

A sidenote_{as you would expect from the structure, my notes are big ones. I don't write a separate note for every quotation. Since I read hundreds of books and articles, putting out every quote or paragraph as a separate $Note would  give me many thousands of notes which will grow unmanageable. And, for people who want to elevate every paragraph as a separate $note, I would recommend you to use Sente as a reading tool; it has such a system. I have that system for a long time. You can then import those small notes into TB.
For me, I had too many notes to manage; I dropped the system. I am now writing longer notes in TB. Exploding the long notes is also a possibility; I don't find that very useful though.  The beautify of the small notes in Sente was on the $Title, anyways; I used to summarize the core points of the paragraphs on the $Titles. Sente is also probably disappearing, unfortunately.}

Of course, the strategies are always personal choices. This is just to give you a little frame to work on (if you are just beginning); which is better than a blank statement of "all your choice.

Dominique Renauld

Oh, you are the one who did that video. I watched that video a couple of times being mesmerised by the  the tone of the narration. yes, yes, this is good conversation. Not all new users should  go through the pain of making mistakes and correct ourselves: experienced users sharing their best habits and tricks makes TB much user friendly.

Thanks for the video.

I was also trying to imitate your system into mine; for some time; because what you are doing is really very similar to what I am doing.

At the beginning, I was having almost similar to yours. I was inserting the bibliography information into the attribute (automated from Bookends; based on this forum)



And, then, I realized that I don't use much of these attribute values. I never used these values in the analysis; or to find specific information. I then moved to a  simpler system where I would insert information only useful for the analysis:
Now, here is my attribute: value:


The trigger contains the link to the pdf file: that is all I have about the source.

I was just worried you have many attributes--that filling them up would take more time than working on the book.

So, since  you are here, I want to ask you: Do you  have specific reason why you fill all the details about the publication? how do you use these informations in your analysis?


Video part 2: detailing how you use these attribute values would be of great interest.

Yes, the $Tags are extremely useful. I use them with agents.
As for the "analysis", I don't meant  that I use data analysis like in Excel. I mean, in digging useful information in the cloud of notes. I have more than 1500 notes collected over the years. Most of them are long notes; about 5-10 pages.

Like you are doing, I also use the CMD+F often. I also use agents  to collect the notes containing a specific terms inside the $Text; or inside the $tags.  

What really makes the big difference is not how we write the attributes and their values; it is rather how we use them  to discover new information and connection --for the progress of our research. The ability to help in seeing new connections,  is  the promise of TB. As a result, I am very eager to see how people discover connections among their ideas using TB's internal tools (attributes).

I am looking forward to your video.

cheers

Quote:


Do you put every paragraph (or quote) into a separate note when you read? or you just write longer texts inside the $Text?

Assume  you find an interesting quotation; and want to comment on it (how you are going to use it; or you want to include it in your next research paper), do you put your comment in a separate note in the map? Or, you comment just beneath the quote inside the $Text?

And, assume the quote triggered an idea you read in another book; and, you want to compare  those ideas, if they are compatible, or in conflict to each other, how do you bring them together?