Ryan Low

Between 1250 and 1500, the production of notarial contracts in the western Mediterranean expanded from thousands to tens of millions, leading to a crisis in information management. "Information Overload" recounts the story of how late medieval notaries responded to this unprecedented information explosion by experimenting with seemingly modern information management techniques, such as tables of contents, text compression, and intricate version control devices to make data usable for their clients. Rather than viewing these laconic but rich texts as rote, routine, or automatic, this project centers notaries, clients, and registers in a new story of this late medieval information revolution.