Consulting a medieval book was challenging—they could be very heavy and half a meter wide (more than 1.5 feet) when open.
c. 330–1300 C.E.
videos + essays
We're adding new content all the time!
Medieval notepads
At medieval universities, students took notes on parchment scraps, sometimes bound together with cord.
The medieval origins of the modern footnote
Manuscript readers tracked marginal comments with dots, lines, letters, and numbers—anticipating the footnote.
Finding books
From cupboard shelfmarks to bookcase inventories, medieval readers devised codes for locating precious volumes.
Smart bookmarks
Lose your place? Not in a monastic library. Static or dynamic, “spider,” or wheel, these bookmarks stay put.
Getting personal in the margins
Scribes left plenty of empty space, but readers often filled the margins with comments—and even little hands.
The medieval desk
A carousel, a wheel, or a portable desk? Reading multiple books at once required ample space and custom furniture.
