Titles or citation keys in quotations, the better approach?

DEVONthink Scenarios
1

I am in the process of rethinking the organization and access to info within DT. I have no doubt that notes must be shortish. But I am in two minds on whether the body of quotations should include the full title of the book they come from or just its citation key. In either case notes can be grouped by source.

Including the full title allows for finding all notes on a topic, when the source title is descriptive enough, without much need to tag them or fill the few attributes available in fields.

I now wonder if placing only a citation key would be a better strategy to work with DT. Whilst this approach could limit the number of results in searches and AI, I suspect it means relying too much on chance to find pertinent information.

I would be interested to know what some seasoned user’s view on this with regards to the use case I’ve stated.

2

Adding the metadata about the annotated document to the body text – title, author, publication date, or the like – is a common method. It helps make the note more informative and formal, and preserves key info if you export the note, drag it to another app, etc. This is the method used by the built-in annotation smart template – you can use that, or modify it, or make your own. The annotation smart template also includes a link back to the source, which is useful if the annotations get moved around or placed in other databases – and also on export.