Books tell stories about the past.

Marginalia, annotations, and objects left in books tell us how readers engaged with the text. The binding, structure, and size of a book suggest how it was used in daily life. Book historians and bibliographers know how to read this material evidence and have used it to narrate textured histories of reading and writing. How can digital technologies help communicate this scholarship to a broader public? Thinking beyond the facsimile, what would a digital “edition” of a material book, rather than its text, look like?

These are the questions that motivate the digital projects hosted at this domain. They include a digital edition of Susanna Collet's commonplace book (1635), a digital edition of three Little Gidding harmonies (1631-1642), and the Manicule software package for building digital editions of books.

These projects are built to accompany the book Cut/Copy/Paste, by Whitney Trettien (forthcoming Fall 2021, University of Minnesota Press). More information will be posted as it is available.