Warning: opening a can of worms. Ann Blair is a great source on general, but there are so many facets to this topic here's a list that I have read or am going to read.

* The Notebook: A History of Thinking on Paper by Roland Allen * The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction by Ursula K. Le Guin * Too Much To Know: Managing Scholarly Information Before the Modern Age by Ann M. Blair * Communicating with Slip Boxes: An Empirical Account by Niklas Luhmann * Akin's Laws of Spacecraft Design * Writing the Laboratory Notebook by Howard M Kanare * Paper Machines: About Cards & Catalogs by Markus Krajewski * A System for Writing by Bob Doto * Building a Second Brain By Tiago Forte * Index, a History of the by Dennis Duncan * Forgetting Machines: Knowledge Management Evolution in Early Modern Europe by Alberto Cevolini * The Filing Cabinet: A Vertical History of Information by Craig Robertson * How to Take Smart Notes by Sonke Ahrens * Filing and Database Systems by Jeffrey Robert Stewart, Judith A. Scharle, Judith Scharle Greene * Organizing from the Inside Out by Julie Morgenstern * The Library: A Fragile History by Andrew Pettegree, Arthur der Weduwen * The Extended Mind by Annie Murphy Paul * Stolen Focus: Why You Can't Pay Attention by Johann Hari * Papyrus: The Invention of Books in the Ancient World by Irene Vallejo * Filing by Jeffrey Robert Stewart, Judith A. Scharle * How Romantics and Victorians Organized Information by Jillian M. Hess * A Writer's Notebook by W. Somerset Maugham * The Bullet Journal Method by Ryder Carroll * The Medieval Scriptorium by Sara J. Charles * Chance Particulars by Sara Mansfield Taber, Maud Taber-Thomas * The Great Mental Models Volume 1- General Thinking Concepts by Parrish, Shane; Beaubien, Rhiannon * The Product is Docs by Christopher Gales * Antinet Zettelkasten by Scott P. Scheper Articulating design decisions by Tom Greever The Card System at the Office by J Kaiser * Systematic Indexing by J Kaiser * Commonplace Books and the Teaching of Style by Lynee Lewis Gaillet * Magic and hypersystems : constructing the information-sharing library by Harold Billings. * The Magical Number Seven, Plus or Minus Two: Some Limits on our Capacity for Processing Information by George A. Miller * The Commonplace Book by Elizabeth Smither * The Oxford Handbook of Expertise * Trees, maps, and theorems: Effective communication for rational minds by Jean-luc Doumont * Applied Secretarial Practice by Rupert P. Sorelle and John Robert Gregg * The Card Catalog by Carla Hayden * What is a Document by Michael Buckland * The Commonplace Book by Ann Blair * Make Better Documents by Anil Dash * A Core Calculus for Documents by Will Crichton and Shriram Krishnamurthi * The Craft of Research by Wayne C. Booth, Gregory G. Colomb, Joseph M. Williams * Information by Anthony Grafton * The Card Catalog by Carla Hayden * Files: Law and Media Technology by Cornelia Vismann * Living Documentation: Continuous Knowledge by Cyrille Martraire * Living in Information by Jorge Arango * How to Write a Technical Paper: Structure and Style of the Epitome of your Research† by Georgios Varsamopoulos * Information Development: Managing Your Documentation Projects, Portfolio, and People by JoAnn T. Hackos * Information Architecture: For the Web and Beyond by Louis Rosenfeld, Peter Morville, Jorge Arango * Software Technical Writing: A Guidebook by James (jamesg.blog)

Wow, I've had an interest in the history of note-taking but that is a huge list. Have you read all those books? Do you have a top 5?

Yeah, this subject is a bit of a rabbit hole. I've read about half of the so far. That's my list of sources from those that I have so far.

I would say start with:

* The Notebook: A History of Thinking on Paper by Roland Allen (This is a fast micro history that hits the highlights.)

* Too Much To Know: Managing Scholarly Information Before the Modern Age by Ann M. Blair (She is a scholar that has a lot on the subject.)

* Forgetting Machines: Knowledge Management Evolution in Early Modern Europe by Alberto Cevolini (This is a collection of pretty deep essays.)

* Paper Machines: About Cards & Catalogs by Markus Krajewski (This is about the development of paper-based databases.)

Thanks for taking the time, I appreciate it. If you write anything on the topic I'd be interested in reading it.