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Scrapbooks and Commonplace books
“[L]et us take down one of those old notebooks which we have all, at one time or another, had a passion for beginning. Most of the pages are blank, it is true; but at the beginning we shall find a certain number very beautifully covered with a strikingly legible hand-writing. Here we have written down the names of great writers in their order of merit; here we have copied out fine passages from the classics; here are lists of books to be read; and here, most interesting of all, lists of books that have actually been read, as the reader testifies with some youthful vanity by a dash of red ink.” Virginia Woolf, “Hours in a Library,” Granite and Rainbow: Essays by Virginia Woolf (New York: Harcourt, Brace and Co., 1958), p. 25.“
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scrapbooking http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commonplace_book
“Commonplace books involve the noting, collecting and archiving of materials. Formerly Book of common places. orig. A book in which 'commonplaces' or passages important for reference were collected, usually under general heads; hence, a book in which one records passages or matters to be especially remembered or referred to, with or without arrangement. First usage recorded: 1578.”
http://beinecke.library.yale.edu/dl_crosscollex/SearchExecXC.asp?srchtype=CNO
Commonplacing is the act of selecting important phrases, lines, and/or passages from texts and writing them down. A commonplace book is then a notebook in which a reader has collected quotations from works he or she has read. These commonplace books often included comments and notes from the reader. They were a sort of reflective journal of what one read or learned during his life–a practice common to many of history’s leading thinkers.
images:
http://dovegreyreader.typepad.com/photos/uncategorized/2007/04/21/cplace_bk.jpg http://www.diyplanner.com/files/lmm_ontred2.jpg
http://www.ubcpress.ubc.ca/images/covers/0845731378.jpg
http://cg.scs.carleton.ca/~luc/CommonplaceBook-PlimptonMs276-England16thCentury.jpg
http://www.vahistorical.org/img/research/tacl_keckley2b.jpg
http://www.bodley.ox.ac.uk/dept/scwmss/wmss/medieval/jpegs/lat/misc/c/1500/06600883.jpg
http://www.library.yale.edu/beinecke/images/book5.jpg
covers:
http://heylucy.typepad.com/heylucy/images/2008/09/29/translations3.jpg
http://www.americanantiquarian.org/images/adopt/2009/tk001.jpg
http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3192/3119261848_2abac1531c.jpg
http://heylucy.typepad.com/heylucy/images/2007/06/20/cherrybook2.jpg