Marginalia as Scholarly Communication
Although we may think of scholarly communication as the process of disseminating research through formal publication or online distribution, scholars have been communicating with and responding to each other since well before the advent of the Internet or even print journals. One way in which modern scholars can understand earlier processes of communication is through the study of marginalia, or the notes to themselves or others that previous scholars have left in the margins of the texts they read. Works have been published on the marginalia of single writers, such as Voltaire’s Marginalia on the Pages of Rousseau (Havens, 1971), or on marginalia as a topic unto itself. H.J. Jackson has published two books on marginalia:
- Marginalia: Readers Writing in Books (Jackson, 2001)
- Romantic Readers: The Evidence of Marginalia (Jackson, 2005)
Sometimes the notes are ferocious, skirmishes against the author raging along the borders of every page in tiny black script. If I could just get my hands on you, Kierkegaard, or Conor Cruise O’Brien, they seem to say, I would bolt the door and beat some logic into your head. Other comments are more offhand, dismissive – “Nonsense.” “Please!” “HA!!” – that kind of thing. I remember once looking up from my reading, my thumb as a bookmark, trying to imagine what the person must look like who wrote “Don’t be a ninny” alongside a paragraph in The Life of Emily Dickinson. — From “Marginalia” (Billy Collins) (Read the full poem here.)
Joan Krizack, University Archivist and Head of Special Collections, will depart Northeastern University after 17 years since her arrival as the founding archivist. Joan resigned her position on July 7th to pursue a career as a freelance consultant. Joan leaves a legacy at the University of several hundred historical collections that document the struggles and triumphs of Boston’s African American, Chinese, Latino and GLBTQ communities. She has also received numerous awards; most recently the 
