Book Traces

New Ways of Looking at Old Objects

Before and during the pandemic, students were able to work on a number of projects that involved fresh ways of looking at collections and resulted in new insights into the ways in which these objects were used and seen in the past. —Eric Pumroy, Seymour Adelman Director of Special Collections

In 2019, LITS participated in a multi-institution research initiative exploring our library collections: Book Traces (booktraces.org), based at the University of Virginia, captures data on marginalia and other reader interventions in books published before 1923. Bryn Mawr was chosen because our open stacks (not including Special Collections) hold more than 13,000 books from the 19th and early 20th centuries.

In the fall of 2019, Book Traces project leads Andy Stauffer and Kristin Jensen visited campus to present on the project and train LITS staff and students how to use their app to record different types of reader markings. Over the winter and into the spring, our team surveyed hundreds of copies, including some from the personal libraries of notable figures in Bryn Mawr’s history. Although the pandemic stopped on-site work, the team was able to collect data on reader interactions with more than 1,100 books. Highlights include marginal notes from The Deanery’s library, a funeral notice from 1885, and a gift notice signed by J.R.R. Tolkien.

Although Book Traces focuses on pre-acquisition marginalia, the project presented the opportunity to look at more recent markings, including marginal comments by students and faculty. Digital Scholarship Project Assistants Emily Elmore ’20, Catherine Lin ’23, and Vy Pham ’22 created Mawrginalia, a digital showcase of local findings that features photographs, data, and their reflections on these books’ unique histories.