From Wikipedia page on Commonplace books (or commonplaces)
are a way to compile knowledge, usually by writing information into books. Such books are essentially scrapbooks filled with items of every kind: recipes, quotes, letters, poems, tables of weights and measures, proverbs, prayers, legal formulas. Commonplaces are used by readers, writers, students, and scholars as an aid for remembering useful concepts or facts they have learned. Each commonplace book is unique to its creator’s particular interests.
As multitudes have before me, I have come to realize that memory needs an aide as one grows older. This is one of my aids, others are small journals of medicines, books of recipes and the like. Collecting this data as I tour the internet due to the large amount of data inspected becomes important and being able to retrieve it is critical.