19 Matching Annotations
  1. Jan 2024
  2. Jun 2023
  3. May 2023
  4. Feb 2023
    1. Francesco Erspamer

      Interestingly Erspamer doesn't mention any prior history or traditions of this sort of practice, just that it works for creating theses within the humanities very well. How does he miss this as motivation?

      Presumably for him it's a "cultural practice" and Eco delineates it well. Erspamer learned from Eco and it's just what he does... The only questioning done is how 90s technology fit into the picture and that was only surface level questioning...

      There's definitely something off about this as a recommendation for the overall system.

    2. Things were changing quickly.Eco’s methods of organizing and filing information werestill effective, but word processors and the Internet werebeginning to offer exciting alternatives to long-establishedresearch and writing techniques.

      Esparmer is correct that research and writing did change with the advent of word processors and the internet in the 1990s and early 2000s (p xi), but these were primarily changes to the front and the back of the process. Esparmer and far too many others seem to miss the difference in which affordances were shifting here. The note taking and organization portions still remained the same, so Eco's advice is still tremendously important. Even if one were to do long form notes in notebook format or in digital documents, they would profitably advised to still properly cross-index their notes or have them in a form that allows them to rearrange them most simply with respect to the structuring and creative processes.

      Losing the ability to move ideas around easily, restructure them, link them together and outline them was a tremendous blow in going from the old methods to the new digital ones.

      Did we accidentally become enamored of the new technologies and forget that their affordances didn't completely replace those of the old methods?

    3. The humanities are the process of pres-ervation and appropriation of that pastness, a process thatrequires specific skills acquired through practice, as all skillsare.
  5. Jan 2023
  6. Oct 2022
    1. It is only too easy to misapply excerpted passages by taking them out of their original context. Ideally, I should have followed the technique, recommended as long ago as 1615 by the learned Jesuit Francesco Sacchini, of always making two sets of notes, one to be sliced up and filed, the other to be kept in its original form.

      Francesco Sacchini advised in 1615 that one should make two sets of notes: one to be cut up and filed, and the other kept in it's original form so as to keep the full context of the original author's context.


      This is broadly one of the values of note taking in Hypothes.is. One can take broader excerpts of an authors' works as well as maintain links for fuller context to reconsult, but still have the shorter excerpts as well as one's own notes.

  7. Sep 2022
    1. chapter 4 includes repro-ductions of index cards with handwritten corrections andadditions. As unfamiliar as this way of taking notes may beto today’s students, it evokes nostalgic memories for thoseof us who attended college before the 1990s.

      In 2015, when considering Umberto Eco's use of index cards in his classic book How to Write a Thesis, Francesco Erspamer comments that taking notes using index cards was more common and even nostalgic for those who attended college prior to 1990

  8. Apr 2022
    1. She frequently cites authors second-hand(“as quoted by”, “see,” etc.) rather than primary texts, and in some instancesthis practice results in the kinds of errors for which earlier compilations werecriticized. The most egregious of these occurs when Blair cites Ann Moss on

      Guarino da Verona when making the unlikely claim that note taking begin in earnest with Francesco Sacchini in the seventeenth century rather than a hundred years earlier with Erasmus and Vives.

      I almost feel like I've arrived as I noticed this error in the text myself.

      Interesting that he calls her out for making a compilation error, something which is very meta with respect to this particular text.

    1. The Jesuit Francesco Sac-chini, in contrast, commended the interruption in reading that resulted fromstopping to copy a passage into one’s notebook: it slowed down reading and aidedretention.44
    2. The first manual solely devoted to excerpting, or note-taking fromreading, was composed for students in the advanced or rhetoric class at Jesuitcolleges by Francesco Sacchini (1570–1625), professor of rhetoric at the CollegioRomano. De ratione libros cum profectu legendi libellus (A Little Book on Howto Read with Profit) was published in 1614 and in a further six editions, followedby a translation into French in 1786 (for the use of Calvinists, judging from thededication to a pastor in Geneva) and into German in 1832.34

      Footnote:

      Sacchini (1614)—further references to “Sacchini” will be to this edition; warm thanks to Helmut Zedelmaier for sharing with me his photocopy of this edition. Further editions include: Sammieli (Saint-Mihiel, Lorraine), 1615; Ingolstadt 1616; Bordeaux 1617; Dillingen 1621; Leipzig 1711 and 1738; and Venetiis Britonum (Vannes, Brittany), 1866. It was translated into French (Sacchini [1786]) and German, Über die Lektüre, ihren Nutzen und die Vortheile sie gehörig anzuwenden, nach dem Lateini- Notes to Pages 70–72 283 schen des Sacchini teutsch bearbeitet und mit einem Anhange begleitet von Herrmann Walchner (Karlsruhe, 1832). I am grateful to Helmut Zedelmaier for the information about the German edition, which I have not seen. Sacchini’s De ratione . . . legendi was a source for Rainierio Carsughi, Ars bene scribendi (Rome, 1709), as discussed in Haskell (2003), 260. For the full range of Jesuit practices of note-taking (including notes taken under dictation) see Nelles (2007)—I am grateful to Paul Nelles for helpful conversations over the years. On Sacchini, see also Dainville (1978), 224–27.

    3. n the first vernacular bibliography Anton Fran-cesco Doni lauded the happiness of the illiterate who were spared the “maledic-tion of books”

      I love "malediction of books"!illi

  9. Feb 2022
    1. Make fleeting notes. Always have something at hand to write withto capture every idea that pops into your mind.

      Fleeting notes are similar to the sorts of things one would have traditionally kept in a waste book.


      Francesco Sacchini recommended the use of two notebooks:

      “Not unlike attentive merchants... [who] keep two books, one small, the other large: the first you would call adversaria or a daybook (ephemerides), the second an account book (calendarium) and ledger (codex).” —Francesco Sacchini "Chapter 13". De ratione libros cum profectu legendi libellus. Wurzburg. p. 91. (1614).

      (See also Blair, Ann M. (2004). "Note taking as an art of transmission". Critical Inquiry. 31 (1): 91. doi:10.1086/427303.)

      The root word ephemeral in this context is highly suggestive of the use and function of fleeting notes.


      The Latin word "ephemerides" can also be translated as "newspaper", useful for only a short period of time.


      Recall also that in a general sense Cicero contrasted the short-lived memoranda of the merchant with the more carefully kept account book designed as a permanent record.

      Reference: Cicero (1930). Pro Quinto Roscio comoedo oratio,"The Speeches". Translated by Freese, John Henry. Cambridge, Massachusetts. pp. 278–81.

  10. Nov 2021
    1. The longest running of theseis Francesco Sacchini,De ratione libros cum profectu legendi libellus(On Howto Read Books with Profit) first published in Latin in 1614 and as late as 1786in French and 1832 in German

      Mortimer J. Adler, eat your heart out.

    2. Francesco Sacchini recommends two notebooks inDeratione libros cum profectu legendi libellus(Wu ̈rzburg, 1614), chap. 13, p. 91: “Not unlike attentivemerchants . . . [who] keep two books, one small, the other large: the first you would calladversariaor a daybook(ephemerides),the second an account book(calendarium)and ledger(codex).”
  11. Mar 2021
  12. Jan 2020
  13. Dec 2019
    1. L'"effet imaginaire" de certains objets sur la perception temporelle du narrateur : les livres et le téléphone.

      p. 115

      livres dont j’avais appris finalement à couper les pages pour ne pas constater, quelques mois plus tard, qu’ils étaient intacts.

      p. 121

      À partir du vendredi à la première heure, le téléphone m’inspira de l’inquiétude. J’étais indigné par le fait que cet instrument, qui m’avait fait entendre quelquefois la voix désormais perdue de Beatriz, pût se rabaisser à être un réceptacle des lamentations inutiles et peut-être de la colère de Carlos Argentino Daneri que j’avais trompé.

      Selon l'arbre sémantique établi par Francesco Orlando dans Les Objets désuets dans l'imagination littéraire, ces "images de corporéité non fonctionnelle" (livres intacts et téléphone) paraissent produire deux "effets imaginaires" distincts : les livres, dont le narrateur coupe les pages, produirait une perception individuelle de l'écoulement du temps (le "désolé-disloqué"), alors que le téléphone, provoquant l'inquiétude du narrateur en même temps qu'il évoque le souvenir de Beatriz, produirait un double effet : une incidence "brute" et menaçante sur le "temps actuel" (le "stérile-nocif") et une perception "complaisante" du temps qui passe (le "mémoriel-affectif").