The NOTA project aims to study the notebooks and note-taking practices of medieval students (14th-15th centuries). It focuses on what these artifacts and the practices that lead to their creation can tell us about the history of the medieval university, while also trying to provide a deeper comprehension of the individual habits and preferences of students. This is achieved by asking and trying to answer question such as: How did students prepare for different academic events and exercises? What subjects were they most curious about? What influenced their preferences? Such an approach has not been undertaken as of yet in the field of medieval studies, the practice of note-taking having been quite neglected as a means of getting as close as possible to what happened in the actual classroom. In order to understand the scope of the NOTA project and what the study of note-taking practices can actually tell us about study practices, one must keep mind that medieval notes are of several types: notes taken during reading (these can be abbreviations, detailed tables of contents, copied paragraphs etc.), notes taken in class (probably the best known type of medieval notes, also known as 'reportationes'), notes taken from the texts provided by colleagues (in order for the note-taker to be able to argue with said colleagues during different exercises), etc. These types of notes are sometimes bound together in manuscripts that one can call 'notebooks' given the purpose that they serve. The methodology used to study these notes varies greatly, in accordance with their nature, and so does the type of information that can be extracted from their study. For instance, notes taken during reading tell the researcher what the note-taker was studying and allow them to make educated guesses regarding what the personal preferences of the notetaker were; the notes taken in class can give the researcher insight into what was being taught and how classes were organized; while the notes provided by colleagues indicate what the main subjects of discussion were.
Although not primarily a project meant to have great societal influence, the NOTA project does have some importance for society. It is essential, in an age of change such as ours, to know the origins of the university as well as of our own study habits, and the NOTA project does indeed serve this purpose. Furthermore, in a time of information overload, such as ours, where organization of information is almost fully automatized, knowing how notes were taken and organized in the past can help one have a better grasp of how information is organized nowadays. Understanding how notes were taken in the past can also be an aid in improving one's own note-taking skills.
NOTA proposes to reunite as many notebooks of medieval students and see what they can tell us about note-taking and study practices. This helps tell the story of the medieval university from a unique perspective, offered by the work of those who study. These notebooks will be registered into the NOTA database, allowing for different visualizations. Alongside this quantitative work, NOTA also endeavors in qualitative work, each member of the team focusing on a notebook or collection of notebooks that tell the story of the medieval university that they stem from. This in depth study allows for the progress of knowledge in the field of medieval studies, since each of these case studies is rich in authors and texts that are only now being discovered. Their study is also a stepping stone in the reconstruction of the history of medieval universities.
