marginalia

This piece of Wahrheit und Dichtung by Melchior Kirchhofer has pencil notes that might have been written by Josef Eiselein.

The Glosas Emilianenses are glosses added to this Latin codex that are now considered the first phrases written in the Castilian language.

Marginalia (plurale tantum^[1]) are notes, scribbles, and comments made by readers in the margin of a book, as well as marginal decoration, drolleries, and drawings in medieval illuminated manuscripts, although many of these were planned parts of the book. True marginalia is not to be confused with reader's signs, marks (e.g. stars, crosses, fists) or doodles in books. The formal way of adding descriptive notes to a document is called annotation.

The scholia on classical manuscripts are the earliest known form of marginalia. Fermat's last theorem is probably the most famous historical marginal note.

The first recorded use of the word marginalia is in 1819 in Blackwood's Magazine.^[2] From 1845 to 1849 Edgar Allan Poe titled some of his reflections and fragmentary material "Marginalia."^[3] Five volumes of Samuel T. Coleridge's marginalia have been published.

Some famous marginalia were serious works, or drafts thereof, written in margins due to scarcity of paper. Voltaire composed in book margins while in prison, and Sir Walter Raleigh wrote a personal statement in margins just before his execution. John Bethune was a poor English poet whose only available paper was borrowed space in books.

Marginalia can add or detract from the value of a book, depending on the author of the marginalia and the book. Marginalia by Tony Blair in a book by Winston Churchill, for example, might add value; a student's notes in a popular edition of Oliver Twist might not.

Catherine C. Marshall doing research on the future of the user interface has studied the phenomenon of user annotation of texts. She discovered that in several university departments, knowledgeable students would scour the piles of textbooks at used book dealers for consistently annotated copies. The students had a good appreciation for their predecessors' distillation of knowledge.^[4][5][6]

Beginning in the 1990s, many attempts have been made to design and market e-book devices permitting a limited form of marginalia. In 2004, the Sony Librie EBR-1000EP was introduced with a tiny but full qwerty keyboard below the display, to permit the creation of marginalia and bookmarks.

Notes

1. ^ Marginalium is the inferred singular
2. ^ "marginalia". Oxford English Dictionary. Oxford University Press. 2nd ed. 1989.
3. ^ "Edgar Allan Poe Society of Baltimore - Works - Misc - Marginalia". http://www.eapoe.org/works/info/pmmar.htm. Retrieved 2009-11-22. 
4. ^ Seeing the picture - Crowdsourcing annotations for books (and eBooks)
5. ^ From Personal to Shared Annotations
6. ^ Social Annotations in Digital Library Collections

References

• Jackson, H. J. Marginalia: Readers writing in Books, New Haven: Yale University Press, 2001. ISBN 0-300-08816-7 N.B: one of the first books on this subject
• Coleridge, S. T. Marginalia, Ed. George Walley and H. J. Jackson. The Collected works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge 12. Bolligen Series 75. 5 vols. Princeton University Press, 1980-.
• Alston, R. C. Books with Manuscript: A short title catalogue of Books with Manuscript Notes in the British Library. London: British Library, 1994.

External links

• Cambridge University Library marginalia pages
• Teachers’ Uses of Students’ Digital Annotations: Implications for the Formative Assessment of Reading Comprehension, Barry Brahier, 2006.