Ackerman, Rakefet, and Morris Goldsmith, "Metacognitive
Regulation of Text Learning: On Screen Versus on Paper" (2011) Journal
of Experimental Psychology: Applied.
Ackerman and Goldsmith compare learning from digital texts versus those in
print form, finding "specific metacognitive deficits in on-screen learning
that do not appear to reflect difficulties in information encoding."
Adler, Mortimer J., "How
to Mark a Book" (6 July 1941) Saturday Review of Literature.
Among the oft-quoted lines from this essay is "I contend, quite bluntly,
that marking up a book is not an act of mutilation but of love."
Adler, Mortimer J., How to Read a Book: The Art of Getting a Liberal
Education (1940).
In this book (available at most libraries, including Hanover's Duggan
Library), Adler gives detailed advice about active reading. He
insists that reading well -- an essential part of a liberal arts education
-- is "indispensable" because it "cultivates our minds" and "frees our
minds by disciplining them."
Anderson, Sam, "What
I Really Want Is Someone Rolling Around in the Text" (4 March 2011),
New York Times.
Anderson describes the pleasure of reading and writing in the margins and
gives some history of marginalia.
Anderson, Sam, "A
Year in Marginalia" (6 Dec. 2010) themillions.com.
A literary critic reproduces some of the marginalia he made over the
course of a year -- one or two examples for every month.
Book Traces is a crowd-sourced project to identify and preserve marginalia in out-of-copyright library books. You can see the interesting examples other library users have turned up, and you can submit your own finds.
Collins, Billy, "Marginalia"
(2002) in Maria Popova's "Pardon the Egg Salad Stains, But I'm in Love," BrainPickings.org.
Here you can read Collins's poem or listen to him reading it. Celebrating
marginalia of all sorts, he suggests "if you have managed to graduate from
college without ever having written 'Man vs. Nature' in a margin, perhaps
now is the time to take one step forward."
"Copy
Of 'The Scarlet Letter' Can't Believe The Notes High Schooler
Writing In Margins" (23 Jan. 2013) The
Onion
Amusing report of a book's reactions to the "misguided and often
completely erroneous notes that local high school sophomore Phoebe Dobson
has been writing in its margins."
Dickey, Colin, "Living
in the Margins" (22 March 2012) Lapham's Quarterly.
Dickey gives a mini-history of medieval marginalia, which could be vulgar,
bizarre, and/or humorous. Here's a sample of the "bitchy complaints" monks
wrote in the margins of the books they were copying: "Now I've written the
whole thing: for Christ's sake give me a drink."
Jabr, Ferris, "The
Reading Brain in the Digital Age: The Science of Paper versus Screens"
(11 April 2013) Scientific
American.
Jabr summarizes multiple studies on reading text in print or digital form.
Kamenetz, Anya, "Caution
Flags For Tech In Classrooms" NPR Learning & Tech (11 Aug.
2016). Kamenetz summarizes recent real-world studies of technology
use in learning; she reports that "results ranged from mixed to negative."
OECD, Students,
Computers and Learning: Making the Connection (2015). This
lengthy, "first-of-its-kind internationally comparative analysis" finds
that the results of increased use of technology in learning are "mixed at
best."
Mack, Dinah, and Holly Epstein Ojalvo, "Briefly
Noted: Practicing Useful Annotation Strategies" (7 Mar. 2011) New
York Times
A lesson plan for teaching students to use marginalia.
May, Cindi, "A
Learning Secret: Don't Take Notes with a Laptop" (3 June 2014) Scientific
American.
May summarizes multiple studies on the use of laptops in the college and
graduate school classroom, showing that handwritten lecture notes are more
effective and that -- despite their best intentions -- almost all students
using laptops are distracted for at least part of every class.
Mueller, Pam A., and Daniel M. Oppenheimer,
"The Pen Is Mightier Than the Keyboard: Advantages of Longhand Over
Laptop Note Taking" (4 June 2014) Psychological Science.
Mueller and Oppenheimer did three studies, showing that students who took
handwritten lecture notes mastered the ideas from the lecture better than
students who took notes on laptops.
O'Connell, Mark, "The
Marginal Obsession with Marginalia" (26 Jan. 2012) The
New Yorker.
O'Connell compares handwritten marginalia with the note taking function
possible when reading digital texts.
Ojalvo, Holly Epstein, "Do
You Write in Your Books?" (22 Feb. 2011) New
York Times
Students comment on their use of marginalia.
Parks, Tim, "A
Weapon for Readers" (3 Dec. 2014) New
York Review of Books blog.
Parks argues that reading with pen in hand encourages readers to be more
critical: like a "hawk over a field," readers with pens are "on the
lookout for something vulnerable" so that they can "swoop and skewer the
victim with the nib's sharp point."
Popova, Maria, "Edgar
Allan Poe on the Joy of Marginalia and What Handwriting Reveals about
Character," (17 Sept. 2013) BrainPickings.org.
Popova calls Edgar Allan Poe "history's greatest champion of marginalia."