Book Traces with Dr. Andrew Stauffer

The Book Traces presentation in the library by Dr. Stauffer was pretty incredible. The amount of history that can be extracted from notes within the marginalia of Victorian-era books is very deep and thanks to modern technologies like google, able to be explored. He estimated that 12.5% of Victorian-era books contain significant historical marginalia. Dr. Stauffer’s process of looking up who people were and their relationships based on their marginalia so many years later almost seems like science-fiction.

The frequency of physical artifacts found within the books was also something really unusual that caught my attention. Sewing needles, locks of hair, and dolls as well as botanical insertions are all common within these older books. The botanical insertion portion was especially interesting as we were able to follow how a habit or action by people (inserting a flower into a book) became practice by publisher’s incorporating printed flowers and other botanical designs into the margins and illustrations where people normally would press one in. This practice evolved into layers of images being incorporated into the works of writer’s like Wordsworth. Images in works like that were connected to other images that sprawled over pages in a psychedelic style. I guess they could be considered meta-illustrations.

The social-historical aspect of the event was immense as well. The social function and form of annotation as a type of communication similar to a modern day email was very cool. Notes to lovers and friends were scrawled on pages or passages that reminded people of each other. Following the Victorian-era books also came pre-annotated in a sense as a result of the practice. Life stages (specifically those of women) were included in books with parts left blank for a mother to fill out for a daughter as she grew up.

The major role of books within peoples lives during the Victorian-era was put into perspective as a result of Stauffer’s work. Books were not just educational, religious or recreational, they were major social tools as well.  Book traces open-source accessibility is a wonderful layout for a really intriguing project.