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Too Much to Know: Managing Scholarly Information before the Modern Age
The flood of information brought to us by advancing technology is often accompanied by a distressing sense of “information overload,” yet this experience is not unique to modern times. In fact, says Ann M. Blair in this intriguing book, the invention of the printing press and the ensuing abundance of books provoked sixteenth- and seventeenth-century European scholars to register complaints very similar to our own. Blair examines methods of information management in ancient and medieval Europe as well as the Islamic world and China, then focuses particular attention on the organization, composition, and reception of Latin reference books in print in early modern Europe. She explores in detail the sophisticated and sometimes idiosyncratic techniques that scholars and readers developed in an era of new technology and exploding information.
416 pages, Paperback
First published November 2, 2010
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Displaying 1 - 25 of 25 reviews
January 11, 2016
This is a delightful and very useful book, but only for certain groups of people. You have to either be a bibliophile, or a specialist in early modern history, or a historian of the book to read this with as much utility and pleasure as did I. I, for one, chuckled and annotated frequently, especially sitting next to my overstuffed bookshelves.
Too Much To Know is about certain ways people in the early modern period coped with information overload, which seems at first glance to be a strange assertion, given the enormous amount of information we struggle with (or delight in) in our time. But Ann Blair points out that many scholars and observers saw the rise of print as generating a torrent of far too much to read. This 2003 issue of the Journal of the History of Ideas offers splendid articles on this topic, including one by Blair.
So how did people proceed? One major focus for Blair is the florilegium, a compilation of the best excerpts from longer works. Like a commonplace book, these works were treasuries of fine writing. They also served authors as quick guides to quotes and topics. Florilegia also helped provide texts when libraries were small and scarce (35). Blair traces their development and history over the century, identifying many different forms, uses, and examples.
Related to this are "large Latin reference books of 1500 to 1700" (264), which worked like florilegia, while adding structures to arrange knowledge, and became weird proto-encyclopedia. And they were big: "A recent study has suggested that up to 1 million collections of sayings and exempla of various kinds were available for purchase through the sixteenth century." (124) Theodor Zwinger edited/produced/wrote a lot for the Theatrum Humanae Vitae, and Domenico Nani Mirabelli created the Polyanthea , enormous, multi-volume works crammed with excerpts in Latin. A 1631 sequel to the Theatrum appeared "in seven folio volumes totaling 7,400 pages and more than 10 million words, plus an eighth index volume" (132). In fact, a 1583 "600-page quarto" work, Margarita philosophica, called itself the "most perfect cyclopedia of all the disciplines" (169; emphasis added). On the way to Diderot, two centuries ahead.
Blair dives into early modern note-taking (Chapter 2), excavating centuries of very personal, practical scholarly practice.
It's fascinating to see antecedents for our time, which Blair allows, but doesn't dwell upon. Zwinger, for example, insists on assembling reference books with what sounds very much like Wikipedia's neutral point of view (NPOV): "We cannot do everything. The task of the collector is to report in good faith the words and writings of others and to watch and follow the truth of the report." (186). Debates over the virtues and vices of these early modern reference books sound very much like today's grumbles over Googling or using Wikipedia, with deep echoes to Socrates' famous denunciation of writing.
There are many entertaining asides and observations throughout Too Much to Know. For instance, I'm inordinately fond of a figure with the splendid name, Didymus the Brazen-Gutted or Book-Forgetting (17). I can't help but smile to see Blair claim to have found a 17th-century origin for the "dog ate my homework" meme (78). I love the idea of a "note closet", a kind of chamber/machine for storing and displaying many, many notes, and the idea of sharing one among colleagues as a form of social reading and writing (93ff). I'm fascinated that early modern information overload is primarily a European problem, as "in China printing existed for centuries without being considered a cause of abundance" (60). I didn't know that undents ("Headings... protruding into the margin") were a thing (155), or that card stock wheels on pages were called volvelles (226).
So why does all of this matter, beyond entertaining book and history nerds like myself? Blair's work sheds light on a whole series of historical issues, starting with deepening our understanding of the early 18th-century's ancients versus moderns debate. It shows us that, faced with informational challenges, people can create innovative responses, and how they did so. That lets us see our inherited information management tools - our indexes, marginal notations, chapter headers, encyclopedias, peel-away anatomical illustrations, finding aids - as contingent, flexible, and evolved over time.
Recommended for... well, you know who you are.
Too Much To Know is about certain ways people in the early modern period coped with information overload, which seems at first glance to be a strange assertion, given the enormous amount of information we struggle with (or delight in) in our time. But Ann Blair points out that many scholars and observers saw the rise of print as generating a torrent of far too much to read. This 2003 issue of the Journal of the History of Ideas offers splendid articles on this topic, including one by Blair.
So how did people proceed? One major focus for Blair is the florilegium, a compilation of the best excerpts from longer works. Like a commonplace book, these works were treasuries of fine writing. They also served authors as quick guides to quotes and topics. Florilegia also helped provide texts when libraries were small and scarce (35). Blair traces their development and history over the century, identifying many different forms, uses, and examples.
Related to this are "large Latin reference books of 1500 to 1700" (264), which worked like florilegia, while adding structures to arrange knowledge, and became weird proto-encyclopedia. And they were big: "A recent study has suggested that up to 1 million collections of sayings and exempla of various kinds were available for purchase through the sixteenth century." (124) Theodor Zwinger edited/produced/wrote a lot for the Theatrum Humanae Vitae, and Domenico Nani Mirabelli created the Polyanthea , enormous, multi-volume works crammed with excerpts in Latin. A 1631 sequel to the Theatrum appeared "in seven folio volumes totaling 7,400 pages and more than 10 million words, plus an eighth index volume" (132). In fact, a 1583 "600-page quarto" work, Margarita philosophica, called itself the "most perfect cyclopedia of all the disciplines" (169; emphasis added). On the way to Diderot, two centuries ahead.
Blair dives into early modern note-taking (Chapter 2), excavating centuries of very personal, practical scholarly practice.
It's fascinating to see antecedents for our time, which Blair allows, but doesn't dwell upon. Zwinger, for example, insists on assembling reference books with what sounds very much like Wikipedia's neutral point of view (NPOV): "We cannot do everything. The task of the collector is to report in good faith the words and writings of others and to watch and follow the truth of the report." (186). Debates over the virtues and vices of these early modern reference books sound very much like today's grumbles over Googling or using Wikipedia, with deep echoes to Socrates' famous denunciation of writing.
There are many entertaining asides and observations throughout Too Much to Know. For instance, I'm inordinately fond of a figure with the splendid name, Didymus the Brazen-Gutted or Book-Forgetting (17). I can't help but smile to see Blair claim to have found a 17th-century origin for the "dog ate my homework" meme (78). I love the idea of a "note closet", a kind of chamber/machine for storing and displaying many, many notes, and the idea of sharing one among colleagues as a form of social reading and writing (93ff). I'm fascinated that early modern information overload is primarily a European problem, as "in China printing existed for centuries without being considered a cause of abundance" (60). I didn't know that undents ("Headings... protruding into the margin") were a thing (155), or that card stock wheels on pages were called volvelles (226).
So why does all of this matter, beyond entertaining book and history nerds like myself? Blair's work sheds light on a whole series of historical issues, starting with deepening our understanding of the early 18th-century's ancients versus moderns debate. It shows us that, faced with informational challenges, people can create innovative responses, and how they did so. That lets us see our inherited information management tools - our indexes, marginal notations, chapter headers, encyclopedias, peel-away anatomical illustrations, finding aids - as contingent, flexible, and evolved over time.
Recommended for... well, you know who you are.
August 18, 2016
Yes, it really took me two years to finish this book. I hesitate to be critical because the author is one of my mentors. But while the topic of the book is interesting and the arguments strong, it gets so bogged down in one detail or case after another that it makes for very difficult reading. I have an issue (as a librarian) with an attitude among those administering special collections (which in this country pretty much means early modern European stuff) of being overly fixated on minor details about individual artifacts and generally being precious about things that are perhaps not as significant in the historical sweep of things. I am not accusing Ann Blair of doing this, but the bringing up of one book title after another and the stream of details that washed over me reminded me of this habit, and made it difficult to see the forest for the trees. Scholarship 5/5, readability is more 2/5. YMMV though depending on your interest in early modern textual artifacts.
June 8, 2016
Information overload anxiety is not unique to the 21st century. Scholars in the library at Alexandria struggled to make material contained in some 500,000 scrolls useful and accessible. The methods they developed in antiquity to select, store, sort and summarize material continued largely unchanged into the early Middle Ages. From the 13th century onward, dictionaries, concordances, and florilegia (collections of sentences organized by alphabetized headings) evolved and expanded. By the 16th century, the size and availability of reference books mushroomed with the invention of the printing press and the newly invigorated humanist passion to collect information. Larger references demanded better retrieval methods. Alphabetical order, grouping and cross-referencing content by topic, page layout, and color all evolved to make reference books useful.
Since I have been on a quest for an effective system of keeping useful notes, my favorite section addresses the history of note-taking, The author contrasts the systems used by Francesco Sacchini and Jeremias Drexel who along with John Locke and Desiderius Erasmus were dedicated, if not obsessive note-takers. I am grateful that technology such as Evernote eliminates the need to write, copy, glue and sort slips of paper to implement such systems.
In her epilogue Blair considers the challenge we face today, concluding:
I heartily recommend this book if you are interested in the history of reading, technology, scholarship, or the challenges of knowledge management.
Since I have been on a quest for an effective system of keeping useful notes, my favorite section addresses the history of note-taking, The author contrasts the systems used by Francesco Sacchini and Jeremias Drexel who along with John Locke and Desiderius Erasmus were dedicated, if not obsessive note-takers. I am grateful that technology such as Evernote eliminates the need to write, copy, glue and sort slips of paper to implement such systems.
In her epilogue Blair considers the challenge we face today, concluding:
"Human attention is one of our most precious commodities and many forces compete for it with an ingenious range of software and hardware devices. Even while information storage has been delegated to other media, human memory still plays a crucial role in recalling what to attend to, and when and how. Similarly, judgment is as central as ever in selecting, assessing, and synthesizing information to create knowledge responsibly. The opportunities to settle for misleading or partial information, and to rely on snippets turned up by an Internet search without attending to their context, have never been more abundant."
I heartily recommend this book if you are interested in the history of reading, technology, scholarship, or the challenges of knowledge management.
January 2, 2012
The problems of an overabundance of information is a perennial complaint, but how scholars have dealt with this has evolved over time. Early modern scholars worked in a transitional period where one medium--the manuscript--was being superseded by a new medium--the printed book. This book focuses on the methods of information gathering and retrieval by scholars during the 14th-17th centuries.
There were several things I found particularly striking about this book. First, there was a great concern that the best books be preserved, and the bad or heretical books suppressed. To this end, people were encouraged to read a few books slowly and consciously rather than many books quickly.
Note-taking was a major component of reading carefully (it still is), and organizing notes in the most efficacious way was a major undertaking and area of publishing. For instance, people were advised to keep extra notebooks to index their notes by subject. An note closet was the ideal piece of furniture envisioned to store notes, basically a library card catalog type of furniture where notes could be stored, indexed, and cross-indexed. The most careful scholars kept careful track of their notes and indexed them frequently. Others liked to make fun of themselves for lack of care and piling up notes without a scheme.
Composing on slips of paper was a common way to turn these notes into new works. Notes would be extracted and copied (or whole sections cut out of copies of books) and pasted onto another sheet. The whole would then be copied out again or given directly to the printer in that manner. There are some really interesting reproductions of such efforts. I am amazed that so many of them are extant.
Ultimately a lot of this work would turn into reference books of the "florilegium" type, which is to say books of quotations from the ancient sources. This was a way to come to grips with the abundance of information and also to select what is worth knowing. These books were edited and censored with different editions for Protestants and Catholics. It is hard to say exactly how much they were used, because people didn't and don't cite reference books, plus at a certain point it was embarrassing to admit you relied on a reference book rather than going to the original source. Enlightenment thinking made it better to think for yourself rather than rely on textual authority.
This is a fascinating and illuminating study of the work habits of these scholars, and extremely instructive for those working in our own transitional period.
There were several things I found particularly striking about this book. First, there was a great concern that the best books be preserved, and the bad or heretical books suppressed. To this end, people were encouraged to read a few books slowly and consciously rather than many books quickly.
Note-taking was a major component of reading carefully (it still is), and organizing notes in the most efficacious way was a major undertaking and area of publishing. For instance, people were advised to keep extra notebooks to index their notes by subject. An note closet was the ideal piece of furniture envisioned to store notes, basically a library card catalog type of furniture where notes could be stored, indexed, and cross-indexed. The most careful scholars kept careful track of their notes and indexed them frequently. Others liked to make fun of themselves for lack of care and piling up notes without a scheme.
Composing on slips of paper was a common way to turn these notes into new works. Notes would be extracted and copied (or whole sections cut out of copies of books) and pasted onto another sheet. The whole would then be copied out again or given directly to the printer in that manner. There are some really interesting reproductions of such efforts. I am amazed that so many of them are extant.
Ultimately a lot of this work would turn into reference books of the "florilegium" type, which is to say books of quotations from the ancient sources. This was a way to come to grips with the abundance of information and also to select what is worth knowing. These books were edited and censored with different editions for Protestants and Catholics. It is hard to say exactly how much they were used, because people didn't and don't cite reference books, plus at a certain point it was embarrassing to admit you relied on a reference book rather than going to the original source. Enlightenment thinking made it better to think for yourself rather than rely on textual authority.
This is a fascinating and illuminating study of the work habits of these scholars, and extremely instructive for those working in our own transitional period.
September 19, 2017
A truly fascinating book, covering from the ancients to recent times.
February 16, 2019
The last 100ish pages or so of this book is the bibliography (an incredibly thorough one, might I add) and an index, so I am officially finished with the second book for my core class in grad school. Woo!
November 24, 2020
Nice idea; too academic in tone.
May 14, 2024
This book restructured my understanding of historical change. The previously overlooked factor of the mundane practical reality of having to manage information is put into so much focus and in so much detail that it seems this book is really difficult to read for neaurotypical people. This book is autism heaven. So much details. Even the mundane reality of eating raw onion and drinking cold water in winter to stay awake while compiling reference works is included in this book.
The majority of stuff we have to do in university but have no idea why, like having to cite sources, having to write a table of contents, you can find all your answers here, where it all came from.
So many attitudes and practice we thought modern, like skimming books instead of reading them cover to cover, looking up everything instead of actually knowing them, know a lot of trivia from looking stuff up but actually having no true knowledge but impressing everyone with random bits and pieces at opportunate times, we learn how old all these practices are.
We learn in great detail what changed and what did not change with the widespread use of the printing press.
We learn one aspect of the European civilization as a post apocalyptic society obsessed with preserving wisdom of the ancients, as opposed to a neverending never beginning place like china.
And a point never explicitly argued by Blair but I saw after having read the book from cover to cover:
Perhaps the origin of the scientific method was less about some new fangled epistemology, some revolutionary destruction of old knowledge.
It was rather a practical matter of information management.
With science there is just one most correct answer which can be demonstrated to anyone beyond any reasonable doubt provided they believe in science.
But with previous epistemologies, there can be an infinite number of books and authors one has to consult to continue the discussion with any sense.
And part of Descartes abandoning previous philosophy, intentionally not citing any works at all in his groundbreaking meditation, part of it was of course, rebellion, but part of it was also the very real problem of previous published works being too overwhelming for any one mortal to master in one lifetime.
By the numbers alone, science is really minimalist in terms of paper trail. Which is why I believe in the conspiracy theory that academic philosophy as a field today is 90 percent for the purpose of academic publishers having a potentially infinite supply of books to publish and sell for a lot of profit to academic libraries with a lot of funding.
The majority of stuff we have to do in university but have no idea why, like having to cite sources, having to write a table of contents, you can find all your answers here, where it all came from.
So many attitudes and practice we thought modern, like skimming books instead of reading them cover to cover, looking up everything instead of actually knowing them, know a lot of trivia from looking stuff up but actually having no true knowledge but impressing everyone with random bits and pieces at opportunate times, we learn how old all these practices are.
We learn in great detail what changed and what did not change with the widespread use of the printing press.
We learn one aspect of the European civilization as a post apocalyptic society obsessed with preserving wisdom of the ancients, as opposed to a neverending never beginning place like china.
And a point never explicitly argued by Blair but I saw after having read the book from cover to cover:
Perhaps the origin of the scientific method was less about some new fangled epistemology, some revolutionary destruction of old knowledge.
It was rather a practical matter of information management.
With science there is just one most correct answer which can be demonstrated to anyone beyond any reasonable doubt provided they believe in science.
But with previous epistemologies, there can be an infinite number of books and authors one has to consult to continue the discussion with any sense.
And part of Descartes abandoning previous philosophy, intentionally not citing any works at all in his groundbreaking meditation, part of it was of course, rebellion, but part of it was also the very real problem of previous published works being too overwhelming for any one mortal to master in one lifetime.
By the numbers alone, science is really minimalist in terms of paper trail. Which is why I believe in the conspiracy theory that academic philosophy as a field today is 90 percent for the purpose of academic publishers having a potentially infinite supply of books to publish and sell for a lot of profit to academic libraries with a lot of funding.
March 19, 2025
Having watched the massive reference book go from being a cornerstone of any respectable library, to a fading memory, I was certainly interested in the origin story of such books. I also always like a good critique of systems of information management, having suffered from cataloging systems of varying degrees of utility while a reference specialist at the U.S. National Archives.
Starting with the high point of Scholasticism in Medieval Europe (with nods to earlier periods and cultures), Blair finds that the earliest reference books, largely intended to bolster religious studies, were driven by various concerns. On one hand, there was the need to integrate long-lost Classical learning into the canon, while at the same time making that canon available in an environment where books were only starting to become more readily available. Not to mention the lurking fear of again losing the Classical inheritance, which drove reproduction and dissemination by any means possible. Whatever else Blair is looking at, you could call this the golden era of note taking; with much of that note taking becoming the foundation of various salient works of compilation.
Be that as it may, the zenith of the great reference books of Classical culture was about the 1650s, as the rise of a vernacular high culture saw Latin as the European lingua franca fade away. Though the lessons learned about information management, and the habits of study cultivated by the scholastic culture, found their way into the then new world of dictionaries and encyclopedias.
Blair, in the course of covering this history, notes that there have been constant concerns as to whether these books cheapened scholarship; if only by weakening the chains of provenance. Though Blair is generally positive about new ways of gaining control of information glut, she does caution that nothing absolves the intelligent knowledge consumer from cultivating good judgement. This is more true than ever with the rise of AI "search engines" ramming dubious proprietary "information" down the throats of consumers; the latest "innovation" since Blair was published back in 2010.
On the whole, I thought this work was still very worthwhile, even if I admit that I learned more about the doings of period scholastic thinkers than I really wanted to know. Frankly, I found Blair's insights into how the book market of the period in question functioned to be the best part of this study.
Starting with the high point of Scholasticism in Medieval Europe (with nods to earlier periods and cultures), Blair finds that the earliest reference books, largely intended to bolster religious studies, were driven by various concerns. On one hand, there was the need to integrate long-lost Classical learning into the canon, while at the same time making that canon available in an environment where books were only starting to become more readily available. Not to mention the lurking fear of again losing the Classical inheritance, which drove reproduction and dissemination by any means possible. Whatever else Blair is looking at, you could call this the golden era of note taking; with much of that note taking becoming the foundation of various salient works of compilation.
Be that as it may, the zenith of the great reference books of Classical culture was about the 1650s, as the rise of a vernacular high culture saw Latin as the European lingua franca fade away. Though the lessons learned about information management, and the habits of study cultivated by the scholastic culture, found their way into the then new world of dictionaries and encyclopedias.
Blair, in the course of covering this history, notes that there have been constant concerns as to whether these books cheapened scholarship; if only by weakening the chains of provenance. Though Blair is generally positive about new ways of gaining control of information glut, she does caution that nothing absolves the intelligent knowledge consumer from cultivating good judgement. This is more true than ever with the rise of AI "search engines" ramming dubious proprietary "information" down the throats of consumers; the latest "innovation" since Blair was published back in 2010.
On the whole, I thought this work was still very worthwhile, even if I admit that I learned more about the doings of period scholastic thinkers than I really wanted to know. Frankly, I found Blair's insights into how the book market of the period in question functioned to be the best part of this study.
September 4, 2021
A big read for a non-scholar like me. Plainly written and well organized so there was no difficulty in reading it. I like reading about HOW people do what they do, how they get things done, and the particular subject matter (in this case, scholarly info management of earlier eras) doesn't matter so much. I love the chapters and sections that dealt with the mechanisms and methods of management more than I did the enumeration of editions of various scholarly works. I like hearing about how people used the written materials they got their hands on, how they maintained order so that they could refer to info of interest repeatedly, and it was delightful to meet my fellow victims of info-lust. In the last chapter Blair writes about there being evidence in copies of books that some people both consulted reference works and also read them from start to finish. I have a little bit of experience with those methods myself, and if you are a person of great curiosity about the circumstances into which birth threw you without so much as a by-your-leave, then these tools and methods pay off!
I also like hearing about the individuals behind the practices of spreading books and learning... the Jesuit missionary who died on his journey to China, but whose reference works made it there. The people who lived through continental civil wars who read and took notes to relieve their anxieties. The 11 year old Duke who underlined his favorite passages and copied them out for later enjoyment and study. William Harrison, the inventor of the "note closet" a system of drawers and hooks for keeping notes in order while in the midst of scholarly activities. The scholarly amanuenses who becamse the first librarians, after note taking and organizing the works of others...and on and on. These are my soul mates! My fellows-in-arms.
Now I am ready to read a big juicy novel. Without taking any notes. Oh, one last thing, a wag with the name Hieronymo Squarciafico is quoted in this book as saying, in 1477: "Printing lets everyone pretend to be learned" -- there are always people ready to diss the latest technology.
I also like hearing about the individuals behind the practices of spreading books and learning... the Jesuit missionary who died on his journey to China, but whose reference works made it there. The people who lived through continental civil wars who read and took notes to relieve their anxieties. The 11 year old Duke who underlined his favorite passages and copied them out for later enjoyment and study. William Harrison, the inventor of the "note closet" a system of drawers and hooks for keeping notes in order while in the midst of scholarly activities. The scholarly amanuenses who becamse the first librarians, after note taking and organizing the works of others...and on and on. These are my soul mates! My fellows-in-arms.
Now I am ready to read a big juicy novel. Without taking any notes. Oh, one last thing, a wag with the name Hieronymo Squarciafico is quoted in this book as saying, in 1477: "Printing lets everyone pretend to be learned" -- there are always people ready to diss the latest technology.
September 30, 2025
Thoroughly researched study of the creation, reception, and value of early modern reference material, especially the floregium. and note taking. Details where we can know for certain the methods of creating reference material in period and use of said resources, and where we must extrapolate. The development of textual aids (such as maniculum, headings, rubrication which falls away with the difficulty of printing in multiple colors, etc) over time is treated, as is the unthanked labor of wives and children in the physical process of creating scholarly material (including literally cutting and pasting). Great argument on the value of further study and attention to be paid to particular scholars' use of reference material to understand their intellectual processes. Somewhat dry.
December 21, 2025
Information overload isn't modern but recurrent.
Information management is a tool of Enlightenment rationality—scholars rationally organizing knowledge to advance learning. Yet, implicitly, when these tools fail or are overwhelmed (as in propaganda eras), societies regress.
European humanism aligns with rationality as a moral/practical virtue, threatened when information becomes weaponized.
Information management is a tool of Enlightenment rationality—scholars rationally organizing knowledge to advance learning. Yet, implicitly, when these tools fail or are overwhelmed (as in propaganda eras), societies regress.
European humanism aligns with rationality as a moral/practical virtue, threatened when information becomes weaponized.
Read
November 27, 2020Extraordinary ability to collect, analyze, and synthesize a great variety of sources, also frequently switching between the present and early modern.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
June 24, 2016
I don't think I'll look at the vast amount of knowledge available to us and the work that has gone into producing books and references the same way again. I now have a greater appreciation of the index and table of contents, the library book catalog in categorizing books to aid research as well as elements that go into making a printed work not only pleasingly legible but researchable too.
Ann M. Blair explores the evidence that information overload was not unique to our age of the Internet and the explosion of the variety of media we now have. How information is consumed, it's originality, it's validity, citing sources, and distinguishing wisdom from knowledge has been a concern since before the first mechanically printed page. Complaints about the misuse of reference works then parallel our grievances of --for example-- how people consume information on the Internet today.
The transition from the Middle Ages to the Englightment period involved a generalized discarding of ancient authors held in high regard (i.e. Aristotle, etc.); will the age of the Internet lead to our ignoring printed material from our recent and not too distant past as well? How will technology ensure we don't lose not only all that has been printed in recent history but how will rapidly changing storage technologies affect our ability to retrieve it as well in the future?
One thing is for sure, the folks behind the Polyanthea, the Magnus Theatrum, and many similar references works, would certainly have their minds blown by the Internet today and how their vision of what they wanted to achieve has been consummated exponentially via the World Wide Web today.
Ann M. Blair explores the evidence that information overload was not unique to our age of the Internet and the explosion of the variety of media we now have. How information is consumed, it's originality, it's validity, citing sources, and distinguishing wisdom from knowledge has been a concern since before the first mechanically printed page. Complaints about the misuse of reference works then parallel our grievances of --for example-- how people consume information on the Internet today.
The transition from the Middle Ages to the Englightment period involved a generalized discarding of ancient authors held in high regard (i.e. Aristotle, etc.); will the age of the Internet lead to our ignoring printed material from our recent and not too distant past as well? How will technology ensure we don't lose not only all that has been printed in recent history but how will rapidly changing storage technologies affect our ability to retrieve it as well in the future?
One thing is for sure, the folks behind the Polyanthea, the Magnus Theatrum, and many similar references works, would certainly have their minds blown by the Internet today and how their vision of what they wanted to achieve has been consummated exponentially via the World Wide Web today.
May 23, 2011
Scholars in almost every age seem to feel overwhelmed with the amount of knowledge available to them, and seek ways to extract the most valuable material to have at hand. This is a history of Renaissance Latin reference works, concentrating on how far their makers drew on classical and medieval references for organization and means of composing, how they compare with 19th and 20th century references, and how the purposes behind them changed or remained stable. She gives very brief overviews of the Byzantine, Islamic, and Chinese reference works as a comparison (which I found particularly interesting), and looks at the consequences of change of materials and production technology and the explosion in the number of books. Well written, but of interest only to a narrow audience.
March 23, 2012
Information Management Practices: Sort, Store, Select, Summarize. Info glut was not a new problem characteristic to the internet "information age."
Interesting comparative work: islamic, byzantine, chinese.
While most of the material Blair looks at is early modern european (in an age which sees the rise of urban, quasi-secular print culture), there's some great background about medieval information practices too, particularly on the production and consumption of florilegia, where bible bits and opinions of the church fathers were re-categorized under various topics intended for ethical/moral self-cultivation.
Interesting comparative work: islamic, byzantine, chinese.
While most of the material Blair looks at is early modern european (in an age which sees the rise of urban, quasi-secular print culture), there's some great background about medieval information practices too, particularly on the production and consumption of florilegia, where bible bits and opinions of the church fathers were re-categorized under various topics intended for ethical/moral self-cultivation.
October 29, 2013
While reading this book for class, I was surprised to find that I was quite interested in the management of information and the organization of reference books in medieval and early modern periods. I think some of my neurotic impulses are soothed by thinking through organizational systems, and on that level this was a satisfying read/skim. That said, it's occasionally dry (it's hard to get excited about a chapter titled "Note-taking"), and I'm not sure what I could do with this information, especially since it only takes on a very specific genre of printed books and doesn't really consider their content.
October 13, 2013
If you want to understand how people coped with the avalanche of information which printing and other early modern technologies piled onto their lives, this is the book for you. A useful corrective to the common belief that only the 21st century has ever really seen "information overload". This study ably blends cultural, technological, print and educational history into the examination of what we understand as information and how new avenues of providing it challenged the status quo. Probably a bit too formally academic for some non-scholarly readers.
March 28, 2015
An interesting and detailed look at the creation and use of the earliest reference works. Very interesting to see that many of the practices, issues, and concerns that we encounter today are not at all new. Take note that this book is far more academic than the title suggests: an important piece of scholarly work in our field. If your interests tend toward the modern, the Epilogue, while short, provides a good entry point to the text and should give you a good sense of whether you want to commit to reading the rest of it.
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October 18, 2012This book gets a DNF from me – it is filled with detail and reads like the scholarly text that it is. I really enjoyed the way the author pulled together those 'bits of books' that we appreciate but seldom think about how they came to be. Sadly, I feel like I have too many other things going on right now to give this book the fair and full reading it deserves. Perhaps I will come back to it….perhaps not...
Want to read
February 7, 2011June 5, 2013
skimmed this...but is really interesting history of reference books and compiling information for scholarly use.
April 23, 2013
Took a long time, and I didn't read through ALL of this book, but I think it was interesting and a worthwhile read.
April 13, 2017
This was scholarly to the minutiae! Some interesting facts but definitely could have been shorter.
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