When the lute became a popular instrument in the sixteenth century, amateur lute players had to make a choice where to collect the music for their instrument. Beyond the development of lute books as a new manuscript type defined by ruled pages for tablature, lute-music notation also found its way into English commonplace books and German and Dutch Stammbucher. The latter continue a practice already established in songbooks, namely the addition of dedications and devices to the musical pieces. This practice was adopted in German students' lute books, many of which organize their music into separate 'books' by genre in a way that resembles methods of knowledge organization that were taught for commonplace books.