Building a Reference Library with Obsidian

A big part of personal knowledge management (PKM) is taking notes in order to learn and improve. But is this information useful if you don’t know where it comes from?

That’s why I think for every single note you’re adding to your PKM system, you need to store one or more references.

For example, for me, I read a lot of books and take a lot of notes. When I finish a book, I go through my notes and keep the ones I think are useful, or containing information not already present in my PKM system. Then, I create a note related to the book, where I make a brief summary of it and I give my opinion about it. I do this for everything, from YouTube videos to Medium articles…

I’ll explain you my system and how you can reproduce it if you wish.

Defining Reference Types

The first step in designing your reference library is defining reference types. For me, I have 3 main types:

• Book reference
• Movie reference
• Zotero reference

The first two are explicit. And about Zotero references are concerned, it actually covers a lot of things. Everything from YouTube videos, articles, Reddit posts, web pages, etc. is stored in Zotero. I actually use Zotero as a bookmark manager. I used to use Raindrop, I also tested Omnivore and was very happy with it, but what I use now is Zotero.

You may consider adding new types depending on your needs.

Reference Notes Templates

Once you’ve defined your reference types, you have to create a note template for each one. You can use the native Obsidian template feature, or use plugins such as Templater or QuickAdd.

Depending on your reference types, you may consider installing some plugins. For example, to easily create book notes, I use the “Book Search” plugin. It allows me to find a book by title or ISBN and automatically fulfill some fields such as the description of the book, the author, etc…

For movies and series, I use the “MediaDB” plugin. Finally, for Zotero, I use the “Citations” plugin.

I will give you my templates at the end, first I still have something to explain else you won’t understand the templates.

Backlinks

Obsidian is especially known for this feature: Backlinks. My system takes advantage of this feature by directly linking the reference notes to the notes I create using them.

Combining this with Dataview, it allows me to see all the notes related to a reference, for example:

To do this, in each note I create, I add a Dataview field called References . Then, I just have to add a Dataview query in the reference note.

Folder Structure

The folder structure of my reference library is pretty simple. I have one folder for each reference type, and I’ve added a folder called “Other” because sometimes I manually add references.

In each main folder, I’ve created a folder called “Inbox”. This is where the references freshly created arrive. You don’t really need this folder, but sometimes my reference notes need work when they’re created. For example, if I create a book note, I need to add the summary of the book and rate it. While a book is not read or rated, I don’t want it to be with the other book notes.

Index Notes

I also use index notes. Indeed, because my reference notes contain some metadata, using index notes allows me to quickly have an overview of my references. It also allows me to query specific references if I want. For example, here is my movies index note:

I have this type of index note for precise categories such as “Articles”, “Books”, “Reddit”, “Websites”, etc…

My Templates

As I said before, I will share my templates. This way, you have a basis to start your reference library.

Don’t just copy-paste them, but edit them so that they fit your needs. I use many things you’ll probably don’t need. I also use these templates with the plugins I talked about above, so they will require some editing if you don’t use these plugins or use others.

Book note:

---
aliases: {{title}}
dg-publish: false
author: {{author}}
title: {{title}}
category: {{category}}
description: {{description}}
cover: {{coverUrl}}
datePublished: {{publishDate}}
isbn10: {{isbn10}}
isbn13: {{isbn13}}
pages: {{totalPage}}
publisher: {{publisher}}
tags: wiki/references/need-work 
---
# {{title}}
---
![]({{coverUrl}})

## Description
{{description}}


## Related Notes
```dataview
LIST 
FROM "10 Wiki"
WHERE contains(References, [[{{title}} - {{isbn}}]])
```



###### META
Status:: #wiki/references/book
Related:: 

Link:: 
Author:: [[{{author}}]]
Year:: {{publishDate}}

Priority:: 

Consumed:: 
Reconsume:: 

Rating:: 
Favorite::

Movie note:

---
aliases: {{title}}
dg-publish: false
---
# {{title}} - {{year}}
---
![]({{image}})

```dataview
LIST 
FROM "10 Wiki"
WHERE contains(References, [[{{title}} - {{year}}]])
```


###### META
Status:: #wiki/references/omdb/{{type}}
Related:: 

Link:: {{url}}
Author:: [[{{producer}}]]
Year:: {{year}}

Priority:: 

Consumed:: 
Reconsume:: 

Rating:: 
Favorite::

Zotero note:

---
aliases: {{title}}
dg-publish: true
tags: wiki/references/need-work 
---
# {{title}}
---

## Related Notes
```dataview
LIST 
FROM "10 Wiki"
WHERE contains(References, [[@{{citekey}}]])
```



###### META
Status:: #wiki/references/zotero/{{entry.type}}
Related:: 

Link:: {{URL}}
ZoteroLink:: {{zoteroSelectURI}}
Author:: [[{{authorString}}]]
Year:: {{year}}

Priority:: 

Consumed:: 
Reconsume:: 

Rating:: 
Favorite::

Final Note

A references library is an important part of a PKM system. I would even say that it is as important as the pieces of information in your PKM system, because if you don’t have their source, personally I think they become almost useless.

Indeed, for example, if you come across two contradictory pieces of information but you don’t have their source, how do you choose which one to take into account?

That’s why I think it’s very important to always keep the references, and Obsidian is perfect for that.

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