# What are linked documents?

Linked documents point to each other, so each idea is written once and other documents link to it instead of copying it.

Updated on 22 October 2026.

## How it works

The idea is older than the web: Vannevar Bush imagined trails between documents in 1945, and Tim Berners-Lee proposed the web in 1989 as linked information at CERN.

In a team, linking replaces copying. A spec links to the decision behind it instead of restating it, so when the decision changes, every document that relies on it leads to the new version.

## An example

The release plan links to the pricing spec, the launch checklist and the risk register. A reader follows the links to the detail, and the plan itself stays a page long.

## Common mistakes

- Pasting a paragraph from another document instead of linking it, which creates two versions.
- Links with no reason, so a reader cannot tell a dependency from a passing mention.
- Links that break when a document is renamed or moved.

## In Nodary

In Nodary, a [[link]] points to a document, and a link can also point to one paragraph, table or section, which it still finds after a rewrite. The linked document lists it under Mentioned in, and a renamed document keeps its links. On the map, the links people draw between documents each carry a reason. Imports turn Obsidian’s [[links]] and a Notion export’s links into Nodary links.

**What Nodary does not do:** a link opens the other document; it does not show that document’s text live inside this one.

- [Import files into Nodary](https://nodary.ai/docs/import)

Try it on your own documents. The Free plan needs no card. [Create a free workspace](https://nodary.ai/sign-up)

## Sources

- [Information Management: A Proposal, Tim Berners-Lee, CERN, 1989](https://www.w3.org/History/1989/proposal.html)
- [As We May Think, Vannevar Bush, The Atlantic, 1945](https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1945/07/as-we-may-think/303881/)
- [Hypertext, Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypertext)

## Related terms

- [Backlinks](https://nodary.ai/glossary/backlinks): A backlink is a link seen from the page it points to: each document lists the documents that link to it.
- [Knowledge graph](https://nodary.ai/glossary/knowledge-graph): A knowledge graph stores knowledge as entities and the named relationships between them, so software can follow those relationships to answer questions.
- [Team wiki](https://nodary.ai/glossary/team-wiki): A team wiki is a set of linked pages that any member can create and edit, so shared knowledge grows from everyone’s contributions.

https://nodary.ai/glossary/linked-documents