“Frances Wolfresston hor bouk”

My last post lamented pristine books that remained uncirculated and lonely on their shelves. This post is a teaser for future posts examining how very much we can learn about the ways that books circulate in readers’ lives.   Above is a detail from a 1550 edition of Chaucer’s collected works. On a leaf in the middle of the volume is carefully inscribed “Frances Wolfresston hor bouk geven her by her motherilaw Mary Wolfreston”.   That in and of itself is a rich testament to the circulation of books. But there is more to be discovered. If you examine the Folger’s catalogue entry for this volume, you will notice that one of the associated names is “Wolfreston, Frances, 1607-1677, inscriber”. If you follow that link, you will discover that the Folger has an additional 10 books signed by Frances Wolfreston in its collections. Frances Wolfreston, you will soon realize, was…

do you write in books?

Some recent browsing on bibliophagia led me to (among many other things) a curious and disturbing discussion about writing in books. A sub-forum in a forum devoted to ChickLit, it consisted primarily of entries on how horrified posters were about people writing in books. I’m not talking about rare books, or library books, or even books borrowed from friends. I’m talking about people who won’t write in their own books. Here’s the words of one poster: I am totally manic. I don’t lend out my books. I don’t write my name in books, nor do I write little comments in the margins. I don’t break the spines. Ever. I won’t even buy a book in a bookstore if the binding is the least bit damaged. I don’t even highlight my college textbooks. The worst thing though: I refuse to buy “used” college textbooks that are highlighted/dogeared because it irks me…

information overload

This is the time of year when I often feel assaulted by information overload: there are new books and articles being published in both of my fields of research, I’m behind on my New Yorker, novels are piling up by my bedside, and then don’t forget all those blogs and websites to check in with! Sitting down and constructing my syllabus exacerbates all this. There are too many new works to read that I might want to include, and even worse, I can’t always remember where I read that fascinating study that absolutely needs to be included. Didn’t I read something in that gigantic book that will help us understand the mise-en-page of printed Bibles? But where? And has it been eclipsed by something more recent that I haven’t gotten to yet?   Information overload. It often comes up as the bane of the electronice age, something that the email…

owning your words

In a Chronicle of Higher Education column, Jennifer Sinor writes about having one of her course syllabi used by a colleague at a different institution, posing the question “Is it plagiarism when a colleague borrows your syllabus and then uses it in its entirety for his own course?” It’s an interesting question. When do you own your words and when are they up for grabs by everyone else? Sinor’s experience suggests to her that although she feels she owns her syllabus, and its appropriation by someone else was plagiarism, the others she talks to are less certain. Her department chair’s response, interestingly, is that she doesn’t own her syllabus: the university does. As Sinor’s column goes on to discuss, the question of what aspects of a professor’s output are property of their employer and what are their own intellectual property are not entirely straightforward these days. But I’d like to…