So this is an interesting thing I've come across. I recently purchased a modern book for my research and whoever had the book before me had some pretty great things written in the margins.
As a medievalist, citing marginalia is par the course, but this strikes me as a bit different for two reasons:
- Normally, we cite the library where the book came in our works cited so that others can reference it. In this case, it's in my personal library.
- I don't know who actually wrote the marginalia, but the likelihood that they could be actively publishing now makes me less inclined to want to "steal" (scare quotes because obviously I'm intending to cite it) their ideas before they get a chance to, something that's definitely not the case with books written several hundred years ago.
What approach should I use to using the marginalia both in terms of integrating its ideas into my work (as if it were another paper, though obviously not peer-reviewed) and in terms of citing it (I'm using MLA 7, but may need to switch to MLA 8 depending on when I finish this particular work)?