Open Notebook Humanities: Promise and Problems

“When found, make a note of” (Dickens 1848, 149). In 1849, William Thoms took this rule as the motto of his new journal Notes and Queries, observing that following this rule for any length of time will result in “a good deal of matter in various forms, shapes and sizes . . . [in] countless boxes and drawers, and pigeon-holes of such things, which want looking over, and would well repay the trouble” (Thoms 1849, 1–2). Thoms could have been describing the offices of a contemporary documentary editing project, except that these days the “pigeon-holes” include shared hard drives. Good documentary editors follow this rule scrupulously, and as their projects stretch on into multiple decades, they amass a rich storehouse of notes, which would indeed repay the trouble of those who would look over them. Yet few have this opportunity, as only a small fraction of the content of these notes are ever made available.

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