The only text within the right time period I found during our library visit was in a book of poems called “The Shoes That Danced” by Anna Hempstead branch. This book was published in Boston in 1905 by Mifflin and Co.
In this book of poems, someone had made marks on a specific page of poetry. While it is not clear whether the marks are accidental pencil markings, for the purpose of this lab, I’m going to assume they were put there intentionally. 
The picture is blurry, but the bracketed area says,
“THE wonderful, strong, angelic trees,
With their blowing locks and their bared great knees
And nourishing bosoms, shout all together,
And rush and rock through the glad wild weather.
They are so old they teach me,
With their strong hands they reach me,
Into their breast my soul they take,
And keep me there for wisdom’s sake.
They teach me little prayers;
To-day I am their child;
The sweet breath of their innocent airs
Blows through me strange and wild.
So many things they know,
So learnèd with the ebb and flow
By which the seasons come and go.
Still the forefather stands
With unforgetting eyes,
Forever holding in his tranquil hands
The fruit that makes us wise.”
Seeing as these are the only marks made by this person in the entire book, obviously this passage is significant to him or her. These marks say something specifically about the reader. The fact that these are the only marks in the entire book can indicate that this is a person who doesn’t ever write in books, be it because they usually take them out of the library where i found them or because they are not that type of person. Additionally, it means that the poem moved this person so much that, even though they do not normally write in books, they needed to indicate the importance of this poem. If this is the case, it is a very good example of the power of words and the weight they can hold with a reader.
If the pencil marks been made unintentionally, this could mean a few different things.It could mean that the reader who left the marks is someone who usually writes in books and likes to hold a pencil while they read. It could also mean that the reader could have been doing something else while reading. In my mind, I imagine a college student who has their math homework open in front of them, but instead finds themselves distracted by the book of poetry. Absentmindedly and lost in the poem, the reader accidentally marks up the book with the pencil she should be using to do homework. I like to think that words can take them to a completely different place, and that the poem meant something to the reader.
In this lab, I stumbled upon a few books that were not within our allotted time period that were also marked up. Reading these, I learned that someone who writes in books is someone who is speaking to the author. The person who wrote the book could be dead or across the world, but someone who writes in books is having a conversation and sharing his or her opinion with the author. Marginalia is conversation.