<h1 id="create-your-first-note"><a aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1" href="#create-your-first-note"></a>Create Your First Note</h1>
<h3 id="lets-begin"><a aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1" href="#lets-begin"></a>Let's Begin</h3>
Creating your first note (or file) in Obsidian is as easy as 1, 2, 3… maybe. There are a couple of options for creating a note. You can use the traditional point-and-click, or a hot key (Mac: ⌘ N or PC: Ctrl N), either option works. From there, you can insert templates, metadata via properties/YAML or embed videos, images and integrate your Zotero annotations. But before we discuss Note content, a quick run-through of the User Interface (UI) may be needed for some.
The image below identifies some of your Obsidian Vault's most essential navigation buttons. Please familiarize yourself with these.
Fig. 1 
<img src="https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/resource.mixa.site/cdh2025/Crafting%20Digital%20History/3.%20Tutorials/02%20assets/ObsidianImages/Vault%20Setup/UI%20Basics.jpeg" priority="1">
In the far left sidebar, I have highlighted three buttons: Graph view, Daily Note, and Command Palette. They provide the bare bones functionality for your vault. Graph view is a visualization tool that allows you to see how your notes are connected. It uses Nodes (dots) and edges (lines) to show how each note is linked. It is purely aesthetic and provides no objective analysis. It's just how you connected your notes. A study can be performed, but user beware.
Think of Daily Note like the beginning of a journal/diary entry. Don’t be scared. Clicking on "Daily Note" prompts a new note to open, with the date as its title. That is it. Use Daily Note for creating your notes and journal entries. You can change the name of these notes as dates can be confusing to navigate (you will have a property that identifies the date in your YAML). Create a note now and tell us something about yourself. What are you studying (major/minor), your expectations for the course and what you hope to learn?
Command Palette opens a window for you to search the “commands” in Obsidian. If you can not remember how to open or initiate an operation in Obsidian, the Command Palette is your go-to. It will also show you the hotkey associated with the command you are initiating (if one is applied).
Try those three buttons and go write your first note.

Welcome

1. Course Description

2. Learning Outcomes

3. Course Schedule

4. Evaluation

5. Course Communications

6. Common Regulations

6. Contact the Professor

how the course tech is built; how the course came to be

7. Colophon

8. Reuse

Orientation and Digital Setup

Week 1

Personal Knowledge Management and Linked Thinking

Week 2

Thinking about the “Craft” of Digital History

Week 3

Crusading into the Digital Age of LLMs

Week 4

Consolidation & Check-In Week

Week 5

Digital Excavation

Week 6

Defining Data, 'Dark' Data, & Identifiers

Week 7

Fall Break

Week 8

Seeing the Past?

Week 9

Week 10

Authority and Positionality in Your Digital Research

Week 11

Publicly Crafting a Historical Argument

Week 12

Open-Access Notebook Workshop

Week 13

Exit Ticket

Week 14

1 Setting up your vault

2 Create your first note

3 Templater Plugiin

4 What Goes into a Note?

5 Properties

Hypothesis

The Simplest Online Memex Worfklow

How To Read An Academic Article

FAQ for Common Tech Issues

Where to Find help

Text Formatting

Introduction to your vault

index note

Atomic Note

Literature Note

Process Note

Weekly Journal

Topic Proposal

Weekly Work & Tasks

Consolidation Reflection

Open Access Notebook/Memex

Benchmarking Your Memex

Exit Ticket/Final Project

1 Welcome to Crafting Digital History Transcript

2 Obsidian User Interface (UI) Guide

3 Templater and Hotkeys Setup

4 How to use PDF++

5 Canvas Core Plugin Introductory Tutorial

6 Hypothes.is and Annotating the Web

7 Omnisearch Plugin for Obsidian

8 How to Use Process Notes for Digital Research Projects in Obsidian

9 Properties, Identifiers and Data Management with Obsidian Core Plugin Bases

1 Welcome to Crafting Digital History

2 Some Logistical Updates

3 Welcome to Week Two

4 What is Digital History?

5 Crusading into the Digital Age of LLMs

6 Week Four Exercise Example

7 Using Obsidian for Digital History Research and Note-Making

8 Reflection Feedback Update and Hypothes.is

9 Week Five Update

10 Consolidation Reflection Submission

11 Module Two Wrangling and Critiquing

12 Week 7 Update

13 Week 9 Welcome Back

14 Consolidation Week Number 2

1. Course Overview

Module 1 Contextualizing

Module 2 Wrangling & Critiquing

Module 3 Arguing & Communicating

2. Schedule

01  memex help

8. Course Files

3. Tutorials

4. Assessment

5. VideoTutorials

Crafting Digital History

News