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Annotated Books Online

Annotated Books Online (ABO) is a collaboration between CELL, the University of Utrecht and Princeton University. It is an ongoing project which produces digital editions of early modern annotated books.

The heavily annotated copy of Gabriel Harvey’s Livy, (or more properly, T. Livius Patavini, Romanae historiae principis, decades tres, cum dimidia (Basle, 1555)), provided the foundation and framework around which the ABO website was built. This volume was the subject of Lisa Jardine and Anthony Grafton’s seminal article “‘Studied for Action’: How Gabriel Harvey Read His Livy”, Past & Present, 129 (1990), and the project has grown directly out of their study of Harvey’s annotations. The digital edition forms the core of an exploration of the activity of reading within its historical and cultural contexts. The project is a unique platform for studying – in unparalleled detail due to the clarity of the high-resolution images and the facility for magnifying these images – the diverse practices of early modern annotators of books. The ABO site has had a substantial and positive response from members of the academic community, as interest surges in the history of note-taking and information studies. What is more, ABO is a worked example of the way cutting edge research and public engagement can be combined so as to add significant value in both areas.

My role was that of project manager, negotiating the donation of images by Princeton University, the building of a website to house them, and the developing of a purpose-designed piece of software for annotating and commenting and generally enhancing the academic value of the project. I worked full time on the project for two years.