card index as database | Chris Aldrich

While digging about in indexing and filing systems, I ran across this chart created by the Oxford Filing Supply Company for a special Filing Supplies section of the May 1934 issue of Office Appliances magazine (Volume 59, Issue 5). It delineates the broad characteristics of most of the major commercially available filing systems of the era.

Of course, by itself, it may not make much sense, so for those interested in older indexing and filing systems, take a peek at Remington Rand’s textbook Progressive Indexing and Filing (1950) which provides lots of images, examples, and full descriptions by many of the bigger manufacturers.

Perhaps these, which are all fairly similar, may help someone in designing their indexing system for a zettelkasten or commonplace book practices.

The rest of the articles in the magazine also have some fascinating history.

Read Principles of Indexing and Filing by Laura H. Cadwallader and S. Ada Rice (The H. M. Rowe Company)

An early 21st century textbook on filing and indexing practices geared toward office workers. First edition, 1932.

The first section is on the rules of alphabetization and indexing to standardize the space of ordering cards for both people’s names and company names.

The second section covers some history on basic filing techniques and then goes into alphabetic, geographic, numeric, and subject indexing methods. The final sections cover the L.B Automatic (Library Bureau), the triple check method, and various other special filing methods as well as maintaining and transferring files for long term storage. Illustrations of these various methods help to visualize how they worked in practice.

This text isn’t as interesting or as comprehensive as the works of J. Kaiser from earlier in the century.

Read on 2025-11-16.

Card Indexes in Wedding Crashers

While watching Wedding Crashers (2005, New Line), I noticed that John Beckwith (portrayed by Owen Wilson) and Jeremy Grey (Vince Vaughn) both have multiple card indexes in their offices in the movie.

One can’t help but wondering if their work leverages one of the variety of card index filing systems? Were they commonplacers? Zettelkasten users? Were they maintaining them as basic databases? Monster rolodexes? There are definitely a lot of them around.

It’s obvious that Jeremy actively uses his as in the opening scenes, his card index is on the credenza behind him and later in the movie it has moved.

If you’re just starting out on your indexing journey, you can purchase the same boxes that Wilson and Vaughn are using: the Globe-Weis/Pendaflex Fiberboard Index card storage box in “Black Agate”. If you need something bigger or different than one of these, try out the Ultimate Guide to Zettelkasten Card Index Storage.

Vince Vaughn as Jeremy Gray sits at his office desk with his fingers tented together as he makes a point. On the credenza behind him is a card index, a bubblegum machine, and a small office bar. — Vince Vaughn obviously explaining the most important points of knowledge management in the office: a zettelkasten (or card index), bubblegum, and plenty of bourbon.

Owen Wilson addresses Vince Vaughn in Wedding Crashers in Vaughn's office. On the bookshelf behind Wilson are two different sized card indexes — On a side desk in his office Jeremy Gray has a 3×5″ and a 4×6″ card index near all of his most important reference volumes.

Vince Vaughn (as Jeremy Gray) walks into John Beckwith's office (portrayed by Owen Wilson). On the bookshelves behind them are a multiple card index files in 3x5", 4x6" and 5x8" form factors. — Along with shelves full of reference books, John Beckwith has a huge collection of card index boxes of various sizes including 3 3×5″ boxes, 3 4×6″ boxes, and even one 5×8″ box.

A Zettelkasten for Wedding Crashers

Of course, the real aficionado of Wedding Crashers will suspect that at least one of Jeremy’s card indexes is full of weddings they’ve crashed, related research, and maybe women he’s encountered. Maybe names and legends of the people they’re pretending to be (“We lost a lot of good men out there.” “Guess who’s a broken man?”) Naturally there would also be a huge section with the numbered rules of wedding crashing as handed down by pioneer Chazz Rheinhold.

I remember chuckling when I saw Tom Hanks’ tags on his typewriters. Now that I’m over 15 of my own which are constantly out and about the house, I realize the benefit of matching tags on machines and their cases. I don’t have an issue with identification and matching (yet), but if nothing else, less interested family members can properly store them out of the way if they need to without causing issues. Interested visitors can also get a quick précis of machines they run across.

Thank goodness I’ve got a card catalog big enough to log and cross-file a couple hundred models. I’m thinking of categorizing by manufacturer, by decade, and including typeface samples, which I’ve already been doing as I add them to the typewriter database.

@GMJuditPolgar, I’m doing some research for a book on note taking traditions, commonplace books, and zettelkasten/card indexes. In watching an interview of you with Christiane Amanpour from 2020 I noticed a photo of you next to a card index while playing chess. Do you have 15-20 minute for a short interview to talk about it and how you compiled and used it?

Quoted a post by

Letterform Archive (@letterformarchive@typo.social) (typo.social)

This box of 600+ specimen cards holds a complete snapshot of the last metal type foundries in Germany. Produced 1958–1971, the Schriftenkartei (Typeface Index) represents the final effort to catalog all the country’s typefaces in production at the time. The cards are useful for researchers and designers as they share a common format and show complete glyph sets. Thanks to Michael Wörgötter, a set of these cards is now in our collection, and his high-res scans are online. https://letterformarchive.org/news/schriftenkartei-german-font-index/

This Schriftenkartei represents a fascinating example of a card index (#zettelkasten) as a database. This one obviously had a very narrow range of topics.

#typography + #zettelkasten = winning!

Knowing What We Know: The Transmission of Knowledge From Ancient Wisdom to Modern Magic by Simon Winchester

In case some haven’t been watching, I’ll mention that Simon Winchester’s new book Knowing What We Know on knowledge to transmission was published by Harper on April 25th in North America. For zettelkasten fans, you’ll note that it has some familiar references and suggested readings including by our friends Markus Krajewski, Ann Blair, Iaian McGilchrist, Alex Wright, Anthony Grafton, Dennis Duncan, and Mortimer J. Adler to name but a few.

Many are certain to know his award winning 1998 book The Professor and the Madman which was also transformed into the eponymous 2019 film starring Sean Penn. Though he didn’t use the German word zettelkasten in the book, he tells the story of philologist James Murray’s late 1800s collaborative 6 million+ slip box collection of words and sentences which when edited into a text is better known today as the Oxford English Dictionary.

If you need some additional motivation to check out his book, I’ll use the fact that Winchester, as a writer, is one of the most talented non-linear storytellers I’ve ever come across, something which many who focus on zettelkasten output may have a keen interest in studying.

Book club anyone? (I’m sort of hoping that Dan Allosso’s group will pick it up as one of their next books after Donut Economics, but I’m game to read it with others before then.)

Book released on 4/25/2023; Book acquired on 4/26/2023

Zettelkasten for Dogs.

Seen in the wild: An actively functioning card index (zettelkasten) used to manage a local dog grooming business.

Six well-used, beat up, and taped together brown cardboard card index boxes filled with index cards and sporadically interspersed with alphabetic card dividers sitting on a desk with a variety of notes and Post-Its stuck to the wall behind it

Purple "Dog Zone" neon sign above a psychedelic/abstract painting of a dog's head lying down.