Comments on: On Bookmarking, Dog Ears and Marginalia

By: yellowtiptoes

yellowtiptoes — Sat, 10 Jul 2010 20:52:43 +0000

Dog-earing small corners of interesting content – which I will sometimes come back to to copy down quotes and references into notebook(s).
Little marking/ writing on actual page, some underlining, but small dots next to important lines can be useful when re-scanning page for refs.
Post-it note system on pages for re-finding refs in academic work. Those primary coloured marking stickers which don’t spoil paper can be good too.
I think all these functions could be transferred to one screen-based reader, with possibility to bookmark, underline, highlight, annotate, link elsewhere, link to personal notes – with much efficiency. If such a programme doesn’t already exist?

By: Tastes Like Chicken » Today’s Links

Tastes Like Chicken » Today’s Links — Sat, 26 Jun 2010 11:04:28 +0000

[...] On Bookmarking, Dog Ears and Marginalia [...]

By: mike hoeflich

mike hoeflich — Fri, 18 Jun 2010 21:52:16 +0000

If I may be so bold, I published a paper on common-placing in law books a few years ago in the Arkansas Law Review. I’m currently working on a book called “Reading Lawyers,” which has a chapter on marginalia and bookmarks. One factor to consider is the move from private marginalia and bookmarking to published glosses, when the marginalia takes on textual authority of its own. And one shouldn’t forget the role of printed sigla in books, of which the best example is the pointing finger found in early editions of the King James Bible, which, by the way, do not indicate important passages, but, rather, passages about which the translators had disagreements. Christopher de Hamel [ manuscript expert and Librarian of Corpu Christi College, Cambridge]published a brilliant study of glossed bibles, which goes into some of these issues. There’s also a collection of essays, mainly in French, on the subject, called Auctoritas. I’ll be glad to supply further references and examples, if anybody is interested. From a neuroscience perspective, medieval and early modern lawyers tended to view these devices as “memory extenders.”

By: Patrck

Patrck — Thu, 17 Jun 2010 14:16:16 +0000

Cathy Marshall has done some fascinating research on this-- take a look at her article "Annotation: from paper books to the digital library", in which she observed and interviewed students in a used textbook store. You'd be interested in her mapping of form and function.

By: Doug K

Doug K — Wed, 16 Jun 2010 19:29:54 +0000

Name and date usually gets written in to books, and always for books given or received. I enjoy seeing the names and dates in old books – my grandfather’s collection of Robert W. Service poetry, dated 1916 when he was still with the Army in South West Africa. For example.
I can’t see that a copy of my paperback from the last flight to South Africa will have the same resonance, but you never know.

By: Doug K

Doug K — Wed, 16 Jun 2010 18:58:55 +0000

No dogears for me either, only on my field-bred spaniel, who makes them look good.

Here’s an essay by a professional historian: basically a card index, or paper notes sliced up and rearranged as needed. See
http://www.lrb.co.uk/v32/n11/keith-thomas/diary

I like ‘omnium gatherum’ for the heap of incidental scribbles which piles up in the corners. Wikipedia thinks that “Omnium Gatherum is a five-piece melodic death metal band from Finland”. Melodic death metal ?

My commonplace book is a text file which is updated with cut/paste or typing in. This breaks down on longer extracts of text though, so not entirely satisfactory. Actual annotation is done via weblog posts though most of these are potential rather than realized.

I haven’t read Denton Welch in thirty years. I thought his style rather precious then, but that page reminds me to try again. Thank you.

By: On Bookmarking, Dog Ears and Marginalia | booktwo.org | Intenseblog.com

Wed, 16 Jun 2010 13:55:39 +0000

On Bookmarking, Dog Ears and Marginalia | booktwo.org…

…onto screens. So I thought I’d share a few things, and ask for some feedback.” James on bookmarking and annotation – something I’m a big fan of. ……

By: Morning Links 16 June 2010 | The Digital Reader

Morning Links 16 June 2010 | The Digital Reader — Wed, 16 Jun 2010 10:38:14 +0000

[...] On Bookmarking, Dog Ears and Marginalia I’ve been having a lot of conversations with people recently about how they bookmark stuff. It seems to be on a lot of peoples’ minds as more and more of our reading moves onto screens. So I thought I’d share a few things, and ask for some feedback. [...]

By: Gregory McKinnell

Gregory McKinnell — Tue, 15 Jun 2010 21:36:03 +0000

Get Evernote.
It’s great for clipping bits and pieces from the computer or taking photos and keeping them organised.

It even does text recognition to help with searches.

By: links for 2010-06-15

links for 2010-06-15 — Tue, 15 Jun 2010 20:06:15 +0000

[...] computer, such as a PC, Mac, or even iPad!" (tags: retrotechnology typrewriter ipad via:jwz) On Bookmarking, Dog Ears and Marginalia | booktwo.org "Both of these activities enable, as they do for me, blogging all dog-eared pages (hat-tip to [...]

By: dumbledad

dumbledad — Tue, 15 Jun 2010 14:02:50 +0000

It’d be worth reading Lemony Snicket’s “Series of Unfortunate Events” as Klaus makes extensive use of his commonplace book.

I sometimes scan pages from mine in (http://www.flickr.com/photos/dumbledad/tags/notes/ ) but I’m in awe of some of my colleagues notebooks, e.g. some scans from Richard’s made it in to Bill’s book: http://www.richardbanks.com/?p=1633 and Richard photographed the stuff from his notebook pocket: http://www.flickr.com/photos/rbanks/3260621439/

You also might want to take a peek at these: Jackson’s book “Marginalia: Readers writing in books” (http://yalepress.yale.edu/yupbooks/book.asp?isbn=9780300097207 ) and any of the HCI studies done to understand paper annotations towards digital designs (like Marshall’s “Annotation: from paper books to the digital library” http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?doid=263690.263806 )

By: perching path

perching path — Mon, 14 Jun 2010 15:43:30 +0000

I write page numbers on a blank page at the end of the book, and if necessary (usually for dense, small-type academic writing) make a small dot in the margin to indicate the relevant bit. I’m not a quotation hoarder (or sharer). If I’m not actually using a bit of text directly in something I’m writing, I’m usually content to the let it remain marked in the book.

The list of page numbers is pretty simple to do digitally, either with a simple text list or one which links directly to the page(/etc.), but the margin dot isn’t something people seem to implement. The closest thing is frequently highlighting, which is usually too specific for my purposes (unless, again, I’m marking off something to quote in what I’m currently writing).