| NOTA BENE NEWS Today's NB News is just a little bit different than most you receive from us. I thought I would write a bit more personal note that recounts the trajectory of Nota Bene from its original vision of a digital tool for use solely for writing my own dissertation to the emergence of a company that continues to implement and expand on that vision. Many of those using Nota Bene already know at least outlines of this story, and we have already sent a version of this account to some of you. But since most readers of this newsletter are not Nota Bene users (and even some users don't know Nota Bene's origins), I thought it might be interesting to you to hear about how it all came about.
When I walked into my philosophy advisor's office these many years ago telling him that I wanted to take a year off to write software that would help me finish my dissertation (already having 50 pages of it written), he told me that he had just received a dissertation started 17 years ago that week. I told him I could be back before then. I still haven't made it back. Instead, a life which I had hoped to devote to being a professor of philosophy has instead been spent making Nota Bene into the kind of tool that would help other members of the academic community, not only with writing dissertations that might enable them to become professors of x or y or z, but then productive scholars and meaningful teachers and mentors. I have managed to give a few papers at academic conferences, even getting published a couple of times, but I've had to live most of my academic life vicariously, seeing Nota Bene users go on to write interesting works, some of which made me say, "that's something I think I would have said had I continued my own career." And others — in the fields about which I actually knew something — wrote things that I disagreed with (and that is certainly a good thing!), while most produced books (this week somebody mentioned 46 that they had had published) in disciplines which I can admire only from a distance.
From the very beginning, the one thing I felt I needed most of all for my research endeavors was a free-form text retrieval capability that would do more than simply find texts, but, after finding them, display the disparate matches in a keyword-in-context outline, so that it could serve as a kind of "idea generator." I remember specifically wanting to find a reference to a term in notes I had on Hegel, and there was no software that could do that. Of course, I also envisioned a program that would provide the most sophisticated footnoting capabilities possible, enable bibliographic citing, simplify creating back-of-manuscript indexes, and other things. But it was the dream of finding fragments that could be then be displayed in relationship to other fragments, thereby helping me to see everything in a new light, to shape my thinking, in short the dream of Orbis, that brought Nota Bene into existence in the first place.
Over the last few decades many of those who adopted Nota Bene have found the capabilities offered by Orbis to be the single most useful component of Nota Bene. We've been gratified to hear of the many specific discoveries that emerged as these users took advantage of what it offered. But as useful as Orbis has been found to be by so many NB users, too many others haven't made effective use of it. That's what compelled us to re-imagine Orbis for the newest version of Nota Bene: first and foremost, to automate its processes, and then making it faster, indeed, instantly at-hand to embed itself into virtually everything a Nota Bene user does, with no effort to access it. From the feedback we've gotten — from those who purchased a new copy after Nota Bene 14 was announced, and those who upgraded from earlier versions — this latest version really does open up research options previously unimaginable.
The other thing I would want to say about the Nota Bene story is this: When I started NB, what I envisioned was a tool for my own dissertation, perhaps imaging that it might also be used by my friends and a small circle of others who might hear about it. But as more did, and after the MLA endorsed it, a company, more or less unintended, emerged. As that has grown, it has done so with a single-minded focus on the needs of scholars. This is what has given Nota Bene its unique character as a program, and its unique character as a community of users. It's the support of those who use Nota Bene who help sustain this community. What you get when you cast your lot with Nota Bene, in addition to a set of tools — ones still, after all these years, not available anywhere else — are the many benefits of supporting alternative ways of navigating our increasingly technologically-shaped world.
Of course, over the years the ways we, as a company, have been able to participate in this community have changed. At the beginning, we attended academic conventions (the program was first shown at the MLA convention, but that first year we also went to AHA, APSA, ASA, APAE, and others [an acronym soup, but you know your field!), and gained many friends-for-life from these face-to-face meetings. But as attending became more expensive, and as the internet provided other ways of being in touch, more and more of our interactions have been virtual. But even then, we've been able to get to know many NB users over decades-long email exchanges. And still other friendships have emerged out of the engagement with the users who wanted to play a special role in sustaining the alternative NB vision by joining the Friends of Nota Bene. But many other users are known only by name — they joined the NB community, did their work, sometimes dropping us a line telling of some new publication, and seldom even contacted us for technical support. The point is that our vision has always been a collaborative one - we're interested in creating the most useful research and writing tool possible, for a special group of users, who becomes part of a community of users whose needs determine the shape of the community.
To sum this all up, I'd say this: Nota Bene — the program, and the community of users which has grown up around it — really is unique, and worth your consideration. It's the conviction that this new version 14, with its re-imagined Orbis, really can enhance any scholar's research horizons that prompted us to have the sale we announced earlier this month. We wanted to get these creativity-enhancing tools into the hands of as many new users as possible.
Some of you took advantage of this special offer, and have now joined the NB user community. We’re delighted to welcome you. Others are still sending us emails hoping that they can still take advantage of this offer, so we have decided to extend the discount prices for a few more days only for readers of NB News (it’s been removed from the Nota Bene web site) to enable more of you who have been our electornic newsletter over the years, but not yet taken advantage of all the Nota Bene offers, to do so. If you'd like to get started with this suite of tightly integrated tools you can do so at the same 25% discount by going to the Nota Bene web site, clicking the Buy button, and then entering SALE2 in the Group box on the order form. But you need to do so before the end of the day on Thursday, January 25th, when sale prices will no longer be available. We're really quite confident that you'll be glad that you took advantage of this offer — more than ever, Nota Bene is an extraordinary tool, supported by an extraordinary community of users. If you have questions before buying, write to sales. To take a look at the new capabilities of the latest version, to see if they might excite you like they have your colleagues who have already purchased a new copy, or upgraded, check out the Nota Bene 14 page. Thanks for reading these personal reflections, and for being interested enough in Nota Bene, one way or another, to continue reading NB News for these many years. We hope you've found this snippet of NB history interesting. But of course we'd also like to lure you to experience what Nota Bene can do to help you do the things that matter to you.
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