Some scholars study annotations as part of material culture. Are they leaving out too much by solely studying those physically left in the books about which they were made, or should we instead also be looking at other sources like commonplace books, notebooks, note cards, digital spaces like e-readers that allow annotation, social media where texts are discussed, or even digital marginalia in services like Hypothes.is or Perusall?

Some of these forms of annotation allow a digital version of cut and paste which doesn't cause damage to the original text, which should be thought of as a good thing though it may separate the annotations from the original physical object.

The dendroglyphs (markings on trees) or the petroglyphs (markings on stone in the stony territories) are the libraries of the indigenous peoples who always relate their stories from the markings back up to the sky.

via Uncle Ghillar Michael Anderson

Can this be linked to the practices of the Druids who may have had similar methods? How about linking the petroglyphs in the Celtic (English) countryside?

https://pennmaterialtexts.org/homepage

How awesome looking is this? Note the regular online meetings/presentations and the backlog of videos on their YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC8Ng6px3fgc4Yjw-en1GcsA

https://site.pennpress.org/material-texts-2021/

Came across as the result of the Schoenberg Symposium on Manuscript Studies on 2021-11-17.

https://site.pennpress.org/material-texts-2021/9780812224955/bitstreams/

Something about this seems related to the ideas of archiving and saving digital and physical culture.

https://infohist.fas.harvard.edu/news/information-cultures-series-john-hopkins-university-press

This looks like a fascinating series and who could go wrong with Ann Blair, Anthony Grafton, and Earle Havens?

Also interesting to see what sorts of things they will find interesting at the cutting edge of all these disciplines.

A means of identifying, analyzing and categorizing objects in Historical Archaeology.

Right. Technology isn’t neutral. Nor is it good or bad. It’s diverse and it’s part of a broader context. Can get that some educators saying that it’s not about technology may have a skewed view of technology. But, on its own, this first part can also lead to an important point about our goals. It’s about something else. But, of course, there are some people who use the “bah, the technology doesn’t matter as long as we can do what we do” line to evade discussion. Might be a sign that the context isn’t right for deep discussion, maybe because educators have deeper fears.

Resources for researching NPS Historic furniture