Research Management with Obsidian: Building a Knowledge Network The Researcher's Notebook Seminar Series • Spring 2025

Download the Obsidian Desktop App at:

https://obsidian.md/download

It's free!

Once you've chosen your research topic and collected some sources...

Tools and websites for the location and collection of research materials.

What's Next?

Real-World Example: "Digital Circulation Studies in Rhetoric and Writing Studies"

Option #1: Create one large word documents with notes on each text.

Option #2: Create a spreadsheet with notes on each text.

Both of these options limit the organizational framework into a linear model.

Option #3:

Create a Knowledge Network

Why Networks?

How do you define "network"?

Or scan the QR code

What is a Network?

“network is a set of interconnected nodes” (Castells, 2001, p. 3).

"Others see networks as thing-like and place-like but comprised of nodes that are far more heterogeneous, made up of “different components accommodated by [an] open architecture”... that enables the network to grow and the nodes to interrelate" (Swarts, 2015, p. 120).

Networks vs. Ecologies

In 1986, Marilyn Cooper proposes "an ecological model of writing, whose fundamental tenet is that writing is an activity through which a person is continually engaged with a variety of socially constituted systems" (p. 367)

"Sources are suspended among many disparate forces while writers compose; they are rather like tiny knots held in part among a skein of ties that coalesces motives, arguments, references, generalist and disciplinarily-situated vocabularies, sites of production, and space-time coordinates." (Mueller, 2015)

Building a Knowledge Network with Obsidian

GETTING STARTED

Step 1: Download Obsidian at https://obsidian.md/download

Step 2: Create a Vault (where your notes will be saved)

Using Obsidian

Creating a Folder for Your Project

Creating a New Note

Connecting Notes

Use double brackets "[[linked note]]" to create links between notes.

Works Cited

Castells, M. (2002). The Internet Galaxy: Reflections on the Internet, Business, and Society. OUP Oxford.

Mueller, D. (2015). Mapping the Resourcefulness of Sources: A Worknet Pedagogy. Composition Forum, 32. https://compositionforum.com/issue/32/mapping.php

Swarts, J. (2015). Network. In P. Heilker & P. Vandenberg (Eds.), Keywords in Writing Studies (pp. 120–124). Utah State University Press. http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/louisville/detail.action?docID=1977043

Credits:

Created with an image by your123 - "Technology network."