"Annotated printed books in Firestone Library ... show just how richly rewarding it can be to examine the sparks that texts struck off from early readers. The study of printed books cannot be limited to their printed contents." -- Anthony Grafton.

Collected over the years for a variety of reasons, the Library's annotated books today provide evidence not only for historians of reading but also for anyone interested in how and why the mentalité of an era was formed. To forward the progress of such historians, the Library is offering fully scanned renderings of several of its most important annotated books. This gathering includes those annotated by Gabriel Harvey, c. 1545 - 1630, friend of Edmund Spenser, and a noted Elizabethan scholar. The Library's scans serve not only the immediate purposes of the Princeton University Digital Library. They also serve as part of larger collaborative digital projects. One such joint project in progress is "Gabriel Harvey's Livy Online" conducted by the Centre for Editing Lives and Letters, based at the University of London. Another such project is "A Collaboratory for the Study of Reading and the Circulation of Ideas in Early Modern Europe: A Digital Platform for Teaching and Research" conducted by Prof. Arnoud Visser of the University of Utrecht.