E/MBook Lovers Fear Dim Future for Notes in the Margins The New York Times # 872/22/11Dirk ohnsonVocabulary to Know Before You Readsnide bibliophile raucousarchaeology symposium intellectannotate rumination conjureadjunct prolific notionponder admonishCHICA! " #oc$ed in a climate%controlled &ault at the 'ewberry #ibrary here( a &olume titled )*he +en and the Boo$, can be studied only under the watch of security cameras-*he boo$( about ma$ing a profit in publishing( scarcely .ualifies as a literary masterpiece- It is highly &aluable( instead( because a reader has scribbled in the margins of its pages-*he scribbler was /ar$ *wain( who had penciled( among other obser&ations( a one%way argument with the author( 0alter Besant( that )nothing could be stupider, than using ad&ertising to sell boo$s as if they were )essential goods, li$e )salt, or )tobacco-, !n another page( *wain made some snide remar$s about the big sums being paid to another author of his era( /ary Ba$er 1ddy( the founder of Christian 2cience-#i$e many readers( *wain was engaging in marginalia( writing comments alongside passages and sometimes gi&ing an author a piece of his mind- It is a rich literary pastime( sometimes regarded as a tool of literary archaeology( but it has an uncertain fate in a digitali3ed world-)+eople will always find a way to annotate electronically(, said - *homas *anselle( a former &ice president of the 4ohn 2imon uggenheim /emorial 5oundation and an adjunct professor of 1nglish at Columbia 6ni&ersity- )But there is the .uestion of how it is going to be preser&ed- And that is a problem now facing collections libraries-,*hese are the sorts of matters pondered by the Ca7ton Club( a literary group founded in 89:; by 8; Chicago bibliophiles- 0ith the 'ewberry( it is sponsoring a symposiumin /arch titled )!ther +eople essays about association copies " boo$sonce owned or annotated by the authors " and ruminations about how they enhance the reading e7perience- *he essays touch on wor$s that connect +resident #incoln and Ale7ander +ope? 4ane Austen and 0illiam Cooper? 0alt 0hitman and Henry @a&id *horeau-/arginalia was more common in the 89AAs- 2amuel *aylor Coleridge was a prolific margin writer( as were 0illiam Bla$e and Charles @arwin- In the >Ath century it mostly came to be regarded li$e graffiti= something polite and respectful people did not do-+aul 5- ehl( a curator at the 'ewberry( blamed generations of librarians and teachers for )inflicting us with the idea, that writing in boo$s ma$es them )spoiled or damaged-,But marginalia ne&er &anished- 0hen 'elson /andela was imprisoned in 2outh Africa in 8:BB( a copy of 2ha$espeare was circulated among the inmates- /andela wrote his name ne7t to the passage from )4ulius Caesar, that reads( )Cowards die many times before their deaths-,2tuds *er$el( the oral historian( was $nown to admonish friends who would read his boo$s but lea&e them free of mar$ings- He told them that reading a boo$ should not be apassi&e e7ercise( but rather a raucous con&ersation-Boo$s with mar$ings are increasingly seen these days as more &aluable( not just for a celebrity connection but also for what they re&eal about the community of people associated with a wor$( according to Heather 4ac$son( a professor of 1nglish at the 6ni&ersity of *oronto-+rofessor 4ac$son( who will spea$ at the symposium( said e7amining marginalia re&eals a pattern of emotional reactions among e&eryday readers that might otherwise be missed( e&en by literary professionals-)It might be a shepherd writing in the margins about what a boo$ means to him as he