Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 32, No. 213.
            Department of Digital Humanities, King's College London
                   Hosted by King's Digital Lab
                       www.dhhumanist.org
                Submit to: humanist@dhhumanist.org


    [1]    From: davep@davelinux.info
           Subject: devices (15)

    [2]    From: Willard McCarty 
           Subject: limitations of devices (39)


--[1]------------------------------------------------------------------------
        Date: 2018-11-21 07:49:06+00:00
        From: davep@davelinux.info
        Subject: devices

Mentions have been made about reading ebooks on tablets. I find them
(tablets) rather ineffective. My preference is my ereaders, an old Nook
and a more recent Bookeen Cybook Muse (and in the latter case, I can
access books which are quite difficult to acquire otherwise). (Verso, of
course, provides a free ebook with most purchases of hard copy).

-- 
http://www.historicalresources.myzen.co.uk (research and pedagogy)
I use Lilo web search: no tracking and social good (Firefox add-on)
This machine runs on liquid Linux
Often coming to you via TOR (The Onion Router)
De Havilland Fellow, University of Hertfordshire




--[2]------------------------------------------------------------------------
        Date: 2018-11-21 05:19:37+00:00
        From: Willard McCarty 
        Subject: limitations of devices

Pat Galloway's practice of annotating ("I scribble all over my 
books...") is part of a venerable tradition, e.g. among the Carolingian 
glossators of the 9th and 10th Centuries. But, working on the pages of 
very expensive manuscripts, under supervision and the thumb of the 
powerful, they often created great works of scholarship that are still 
not terribly well understood. Today's scribblers in the margins of 
(relatively) cheap printed books leave behind momentary thoughts that 
usually aren't great works in themselves, though the marginal 
scribblings of a great scholar might be. 

I once imitated the Carolingians, carefully, with an edged pen, 
annotating as I read. But then, years later, reading my younger 
self's thoughts, was embarrassed, and so stopped doing that. Later 
still, branching out in subject matter and so acquiring many more
books, I avoid assiduously any used book with annotations in it -- 
seldom are the thoughts and underscoring anything but annoying, 
and they interfere with OCR.

So, now it's slips of paper, which in some cases I scan in and 
attach to a scanned copy of the book in question.

Many variables make me seriously doubtful that anyone will ever 
produce a note-taking tool for all seasons and annotators. That said, 
I am mightily impressed (enough to use it all the time, but not at 
all times) the simple and elegant QwikCards. And, please note, I use 
it to print out those slips so that I can do what James Murray did 
when composing entries for the OED. "Hoc unum facio". he declared, and 
did it magnificently well.

Yours,
WM
-- 
Willard McCarty (www.mccarty.org.uk/),
Professor emeritus, Department of Digital Humanities, King's College London;
Adjunct Professor, Western Sydney University; Editor, Interdisciplinary 
Science Reviews (www.tandfonline.com/loi/yisr20) and Humanist 
(www.dhhumanist.org)




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