Commonplace books (or commonplaces) are a way to compile knowledge, usually by writing information into books. They have been kept from antiquity, and were kept particularly during the Renaissance and in the nineteenth century. Such books are similar to scrapbooks filled with items of many kinds: notes, proverbs, adages, aphorisms, maxims, quotes, letters, poems, tables of weights and measures, prayers, legal formulas, and recipes.
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Commonplaces are a separate genre of writing from diaries or travelogues. Commonplaces are used by readers, writers, students, and scholars as an aid for remembering useful concepts or facts […].
“Commonplace book.” Wikipedia, 10 May 2024. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commonplace_book
The only website I ever kept up for any significant amount of time (as the Internet Archive is my witness) was, without me realizing, a commonplace book — a storehouse of words and information that struck me while reading and listening. Trying that again.