Marginalia in the library

Laura Crossett writes about marginal notes in books on her blog, quoting Roger Tory Peterson:

Roger Tory Peterson, author of the classic A Field Guide to the Birds wrote, when the book's second edition came out, that he was always happy when people showed him their copies of his book.

"It is gratifying to see a copy marked on nearly every page, for I know that it has been well used. Although the cover is waterproofed, I have seen many copies with home-made oilcloth jackets; I have seeen copies torn apart, reorganized and rebound to suit the owners taste; others have been tabbed with index tabs, or fitted with flaps or envelopes to hold daily check-lists."*

I was wondering the other day whether libraries shouldn't start to keep special collections of books meant to be written in. There would be a special shelf for them, when you checked them out there would be a nice pencil or pen to go with, and maybe if you were lavish you'd bind in a few extra blank pages between chapters for extra notes or a pocket in the back to keep note cards.

I've often want to leave behind a note to the next reader, or to see what the previous reader thought of the copy I am about to look at.

Comments

[Patricia Uttaro]

Many years ago, I worked for a woman who had comment sheets inserted into every new book that was bought for her library. I was a page at the time, and I confess that I lost a great of work time to reading the comments in the books I was shelving. When I became a librarian, I started putting comment sheets in our books. People love to see what other readers have thought of a book, and it's fascinating to see how different people interpret the same story.

[Matt]

Only roadblock I can see is handwriting!

[Kathleen]

I'm a librarian at the University of Michigan and we once had someone email us to ask us to look at specific pages of a particular book and describe the markings we found on them. He apparently had a theory about readers' reactions to certain passages of this particular book and was trying to verify it using the marginalia in copies of the books owned by libraries. Very unusual request I must say!

I believe one of the objections Nicholson Baker raised in the New Yorker article about the demise of the card catalog was the loss of the handwritten notes on the cards.

[Kathleen]

Interesting post at the Crooked Timber blog about signatures on the old borrowing cards that used to be in the back of library books (names like John Rawls or Sam Alito).
http://crookedtimber.org/2006/01/09/serendipity-2/