07w30:1 The Notebook Posted July 23rd, 2007 by timothy. 2 Comments Good Reads Mailing List | 2007 week 30 number 1 (The Notebook) Truth be told, I prepped this Goodread a day before the hardrive on my notebook computer crashed, and so I’ve had to do it all over again. Which I think is worth sharing, given the subject matter of this GR – the traditional paper notebooks, a medium endangered by fire but not by mechanical failure and magnets. It’s now become a cliché statement to say that as our the data of our world moves further and further toward the digital, the danger of losing it all one day becomes greater and greater. Nevertheless, it is statement worth repeating given that notebooks have always been about the repition of passages and quotes that can become cliché through their preservation. This GR is celebrating the digitization of some notebooks, particularly those of Leonardo Da Vinci, a hardcopy of which is now viewable at the Art Gallery of Ontario over the summer. This notebook (Codex Forster I) having achieved Da Vinci’s dream of flight to arrive here from London’s Victoria & Albert Museum last visited our city when it was exhibited at the ROM during the summer of 1998, where I first got the chance to see it. Going by the poster and mismemory, I thought the AGO was exhibiting the same spread as the ROM had, and yet, through one of the links below, I was able to remember correctly and see that the AGO is exhibiting pages 6v|7r while the ROM had shown 15v|16r. Further, the ROM had kept the pages open with a clear vinyl strap, whereas the AGO has the book displayed in an angled cradle, in its own illuminated box, beneath a piece of glass without a transparent vinyl holder. At the AGO it is accompanied by a flash animation (‘Geometrical Solids’), which can aslo be accessed at the same link. Secondly, a section on commonplace books, the old name for what we now call notebooks, or as some have argued, blogs. This selection was inspired by hearing Anthony Grafton’s wonderful lecture on the Slought Foundation website, which is there available as an AAC file, and which I’ve also made available as an MP3.-Timothy —————————————- Leonardo’s Notebooks Leonardo da Vinci Notebooks | V&A Museum http://goodreads.ca/shorty/ac/forstercodices/ e-Leo | Biblioteca Leonardiana http://www.leonardodigitale.com/login.html // sign in (‘accedi’) with user: goodreads pass: goodreads and then click on `sfoglia i manoscritti` and the chose the notebook from the left hand menu (`Madrid I, Madrid II, and Atlantico) Commonplace Books Literary Honeycombs: Storage and Retrieval of Texts Before Modern Times | Anthony Grafton AAC file (from Slought Foundation) MP3 file (Goodreads Mirror) Commonplace | Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commonplace “Commonplace books (or commonplaces) emerged in the 15th century with the availability of cheap paper for writing, mainly in England. They were a way to compile knowledge, usually by writing information into books. They were essentially scrapbooks filled with items of every kind: medical recipes, quotes, letters, poems, tables of weights and measures, proverbs, prayers, legal formulas. Commonplaces were used by readers, writers, students, and humanists as an aid for remembering useful concepts or facts they had learned. Each commonplace book was unique to its creator’s particular interests”. Long S | Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_s The long, medial or descending s (Å¿) is a form of the minuscule letter ‘s’ formerly used where ‘s’ occurred in the middle or at the beginning of a word, for example Å¿infulneÅ¿s (“sinfulness”). The modern letterform was called the terminal or short s. From Yale’s Beinecke Rare Book Library Commonplace Books | Beinecke Rare Book Library http://www.library.yale.edu/beinecke/compb.htm Osbourne b205 | Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library http://goodreads.ca/shorty/yale/Osbourne/ William Hill’s Commonplace Book | Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library http://goodreads.ca/shorty/yale/hill/ Sartaine most holsome meditations | Peter Mowie http://goodreads.ca/shorty/yale/sartain/ Johann Sigmund Kusser’s Commonplacebook http://goodreads.ca/shorty/yale/Kusser/ Tobias Alston’s CPB | Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library http://goodreads.ca/shorty/yale/alston/ Robert Herrick’s CPB | Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library http://goodreads.ca/shorty/yale/herrick/ Richard Cromleholm’s CPB | Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library http://goodreads.ca/shorty/yale/Cromleholm/ William Camden’s CPB | Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library http://goodreads.ca/shorty/yale/camden/ The Book of Brome | Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library http://goodreads.ca/shorty/yale/bookofbrome/ Manuscript Guide MS327 | Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library http://goodreads.ca/shorty/yale/ms327/ —————————————- Long links made short by using Shorty (http://get-shorty.com) To remove or add yourself to this list, go here http://goodreads.timothycomeau.com
