Why Students Write in Library Books

Visitors usually notice the writing before they notice the books. They'll pull a history book from the shelf, open somewhere near the middle, and stop. There's a sentence underlined in pencil. Beside it someone has written, "I think he's confusing confidence with certainty." A few pages later another student, years afterward looking at the date, has drawn a small arrow into the margin and replied, "Keep reading." Still later someone else has circled a paragraph and added, "This is the part that changed my mind."

The first reaction is almost always the same. "Someone wrote in the books." The librarian usually smiles. "I should hope so."

Most schools work very hard to keep library books looking untouched. New books are covered. Torn pages are repaired. Coffee stains are treated like small emergencies. There's nothing particularly wrong with any of that, because books deserve to last. Around here, however, looking untouched has never been the same thing as looking useful.

Nobody remembers exactly when students began writing in the margins. Like most school traditions worth keeping, it seems to have happened gradually enough that nobody thought to declare it a tradition. The founder certainly never announced it at an assembly. He simply had an odd habit of buying used philosophy books he already owned because he wanted to read the notes left behind by other readers. He claimed the author wrote the first draft of the conversation. Everyone else wrote the second. Students noticed. Teachers noticed the students noticing.

Eventually someone wrote a question in the margin of a library book instead of a notebook, and another student answered it months later. Then a teacher added a tiny note of her own. Before long the interesting part of reading wasn't always discovering what the author had written. Sometimes it was discovering what another curious mind had noticed that everyone else had walked right past. The library changed without anyone ever holding a meeting about it.

There are, of course, a few unwritten rules. Ink is considered slightly overconfident. Pencil leaves room for the possibility that tomorrow's reader may discover something you missed today.

Simply writing, "This is wrong," is generally viewed as lazy. If you're going to disagree with an author, the polite thing to do is explain why. Better yet, ask a question interesting enough that the next reader can't resist answering it.

And perhaps most importantly, never write to impress the person standing next to you. Write for the student who won't open that book until five years after you've graduated. They're the one you're actually talking to.

Parents occasionally ask whether all this becomes distracting. The librarian usually answers that question with another one. "When your child finishes a book, what do you hope happens next?"

Most people have never really thought about it. The usual assumption is that reading ends when the last page is turned. The book closes. It goes back on the shelf. The conversation is over. MindStretched has never believed that. The last page is usually where the interesting part begins.

A good book doesn't merely give someone new ideas. It quietly changes the questions they ask for the rest of the week. Sometimes for the rest of their life. If that's true, leaving a thoughtful note for the next reader isn't damaging the book at all. It's helping the conversation continue one person farther than it otherwise would have.

The Professor once remarked that civilization advances in surprisingly ordinary ways. Rarely because one extraordinary person has a perfect idea, but because thousands of ordinary people each leave the next person a slightly better place to begin. 

That's all a margin note really is. A slightly better place to begin.