4 Matching Annotations
  1. Dec 2023
    1. “I do all my own research,” she said, “though reviewers have speculatedthat I must have a band of hirelings. I like to be led by a footnote ontosomething I never thought of. I rarely photocopy research materials because, for me, note-taking is learning, distilling. That’s the whole essence ofthe business. In taking notes, you have to discard what you don’t need. If you[photocopy] it, you haven’t chewed it.”

      Sounds similar to Umberto Eco's admonition about photocopying: https://hypothes.is/a/U3Sg_r0ZEe25T2tD3U-nmw

  2. Mar 2023
    1. Beware the “alibi of photocopies”! Photocopies are indis-pensable instruments. They allow you to keep with you atext you have already read in the library, and to take homea text you have not read yet. But a set of photocopies canbecome an alibi. A student makes hundreds of pages ofphotocopies and takes them home, and the manual laborhe exercises in doing so gives him the impression that hepossesses the work. Owning the photocopies exempts thestudent from actually reading them. This sort of vertigo ofaccumulation, a neocapitalism of information, happens tomany. Defend yourself from this trap: as soon as you havethe photocopy, read it and annotate it immediately. If youare not in a great hurry, do not photocopy something newbefore you own (that is, before you have read and annotated)the previous set of photocopies. There are many things thatI do not know because I photocopied a text and then relaxedas if I had read it.

      (p. 125)

  3. Feb 2023
    1. Consider Eco’s caution against “the alibi of photocopies”: “A student makes hundreds of pages of photocopies and takes them home, and the manual labor he exercises in doing so gives him the impression that he possesses the work. Owning the photocopies exempts the student from actually reading them. This sort of vertigo of accumulation, a neocapitalism of information, happens to many.” Many of us suffer from an accelerated version of this nowadays, as we effortlessly bookmark links or save articles to Instapaper, satisfied with our aspiration to hoard all this new information, unsure if we will ever get around to actually dealing with it.

      neocapitalism of information!!

      Is information overload compounded by our information hoarding tendencies?

  4. Oct 2022
    1. Goutor mentions that the innovation of photocopying, while potentially useful in some cases, isn't a replacement for actual reading and proper note taking. (p30) These same sorts of affordances and problems might be similar in the newer digital/online realm for people who rely on either whole scale copy/pasting or highlight capturing of texts, but who don't do the actual work of reading, processing, and creating good notes.

      Some of the benefits like portability, ease of access, ability to work with delicate primary materials, better facsimiles of things like maps or tables, etc. are still true.