Master new terminology with Obsidian Bases
Bases is a new core plugin for Obsidian that turns a any set of notes into a powerful database. It’s just been released in beta and already shows amazing promise. Imagine a local version of Notion, or Airtable, except no internet connection is required, everything is offline, and all your data are in a plain text, easy-to-edit format.
This is the perfect solution for a local knowledge management system to handle a bunch of acronyms you might come across working in a new domain. For example, I’m working on my Yellow Best certification in Lean Six Sigma, a process improvement methodology:
This was super easy and fun to setup.
Build a Base for a lexicon
Requirements
You’ll need Obsidian, of course. Bases is in pre-release, so you’ll need a Catalyst license, which is a one time $25 purchase.
Data model
I modeled my data by working with a few sample cases — the Lean Six Sigma terms, but also some client’s specific language and other studies. The big change from what I’ve historically done is to move the short definition from the title itself, into the metadata, where it can be manipulated by bases more easily in the table view.
| Key | Value | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| title | the term itself | Build an atomic architecture: each term will generate a single file, named for the term itself. There will be conflicts later with multiple definitions for a single term, to be addressed then. |
| tags | lexicon | All entries will use the ’lexicon’ tag to make filtering easy |
| definition | term definition | Short definition in metadata properties makes a very readable base |
| related_terms | other related terms | Links to other terms using the [[ filename ]] syntax |
| domain | Subject area, discipline, or context for this term | |
| industry | Pharma / Manufacturing etc. | |
| client | ||
| project |
Template
It’s much, much easier to manage multiple notes with an Obsidian template that pre-populates these properties. Draft a note in YAML, drop it in your template folder, and include your data model:
---
tags:
- lexicon
date: {{date}}
definition:
related_terms:
domain:
industry:
project:
client:
pronounciation:
---Write
Create your initial base with Bases: Create new base. At first, you’ll see all your notes: filter on the lexicon tag. Then, add the properties above to the view.
Now the fun begins: create a new note, insert the template, and name the note title the abbreviation itself. Drop in the definition, but no need to spend too much time editing the note here, because…
Edit and integrate
As the Base grows you’ll be able to edit directly in the table view! It makes relating terms, revising definitions, adding domain, project, etc. values super easy peasy.
Embed
The real joy is that a Base view can be embedded in other notes, too. So my master notes for my certification include a view variation that excludes the domain (“Lean Six Sigma”), Project, Client, etc., filters on domain, and keeps everything relevant. That’s the screenshot above.
Lessons Learned
- Once you draft a template, you’ll want to filter that out: use the
file.folderattribute - It’s incredibly easy to export a base in table format, to copy and paste elsewhere
- The
containsfunction in bases matches an exact string, counterintuitively. For tags, this means it does not match a tag and all subtags. You can declare subtags explicitly, though, by filtering using a tag group and or-ing them together - Right now, there’s no UI to add new lexical entries. But you can edit properties directly, and click through to the note to add further color, illustrations, etc.
- This is in early beta! Things are likely to change as it evolves.
Give it a try and let me know what you think!