As Max W. Thomas puts it, "commonplace books are about memory, which
takes both material and immaterial form; the commonplace book is like a
record of what that memory might look like". The commonplace book
exists to serve the commonplace storehouse of the mind, to assist the
learner to master knowledge and wisdom, even, as Erasmus thought, all
knowledge.
-- Paul Dyck "Reading and Writing the Commonplace:
Literary Culture Then and Now" (Re)Soundings (Winter 1997)
http://www.millersv.edu/~resound/*vol1iss1/topframe.html