Don’t write
in your books! Who doesn’t remember this phrase from your schooldays?
But for book lovers this admonition makes no sense—reading and writing
are inseparable. All those who love and live with literature know that
books are not static things, but rather dynamic tools of learning,
thought and imagination. The best readers both read and write back.
All
over the world in every language there are hundreds of different words
that describe the act of writing: Scribble, inscribe, doodle, dash off,
draft, compose, create….annotate—visible language in all its
permutations.
This week the Brooklyn Museum Wilbour Library of Egyptology is highlighting our rich trove of annotated works by our founder Charles Edwin Wilbour (1833-1896).
Wilbour’s personal library forms the core of our collection and
includes all the major texts for the study of Ancient Egypt of his time.
Many of the books are annotated with notes, shorthand, comments,
corrections, drawings and more.
These
annotations are currently being catalogued and preserved so that they
can be more accessible to researchers and the general public. The notes,
drawings and marginalia are fun and fascinating, but they are also valuable research tools.
Wilbour, like other Egyptologists of the time, traveled with his books
to excavations and annotated them on site; he also traded volumes with
fellow scholars. These marginal writings are a vibrant record of thought
and a form a scholarly communication. A list of Wilbour annotated
titles can be found here.
Posted by Roberta Munoz
with help from intern, Isabel Adler
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