Margin Notes

Reading scholarly works on an electronic device make margin notes a breeze. Most reading programs offer some kind of tool to write small notes on the edge of the page. I like to use Adobe Acrobat, which allows me to place a comment box anywhere on the page where I can jot down quick ideas. Margin notes are great for summaries of paragraphs — short descriptions of the claims and content of each paragraph or cluster of paragraphs that are helpful for understanding the organization of the work and a good reminder of what each section was about. They can also be used for definitions of key terms or unknown words, or even to make personal comments as a reader on the material. If there's an idea we really agree or disagree with, a margin note is a great way to mark exactly what and why. If we have questions while reading, margin notes keep them in place, and after we find the answer, it's easy to add it to the note to reference in the future. Notes are incredibly versatile and can be used for all sorts of interaction with the text. A few more options are considering what kinds of sources are present or how the historian's arguments support or contradict other scholars' work.

Time to put it all in:

End of the Path

Unlike the history described in the texts themselves or the fragile relics of that history sitting in a museum, scholarly works in history are not untouchable — in fact, they're meant to be touched, probed, and dissected. And we have many, many ways of doing so, whether it's through highlights or pointing out things of interest or noting where the work fits into a scholarly debate. The path we've taken here is just one of a million different ways to actively engage with scholarly works in history, and while it may be one great method to do so, there are plenty more. The other branches along the road we passed by contain just a few of these other strategies. No matter how we mix and match all of these techniques, our goal, in the end, is to get deep into these texts and really touch and feel whatever history we can.