Cutting and Pasting Slips: Early Modern Compilation and Information Management

Cutting up paper slips with pieces of information written on them, sorting them into alphabetical order or some other precise order, and pasting them into books was an important information management strategy in early modern Europe. It does not seem to have been used in the fifteenth century, but by 1548 it was apparently known to a number of people, and thereafter it continued to be used into the eighteenth century and, for a few purposes, beyond. The story of the use of cut and pasted slips is presented here from the primary evidence of surviving texts made up from pasted slips, and from the secondary evidence of references to such texts.