CAMBRIDGE, Mass. — Every day in lecture halls across the country students sit quietly taking notes on laptops and in old-fashioned notebooks, or at least pretending to. But last Friday some 250 academics and civilians gathered at Harvard for a more self-conscious exercise: a chance to take notes on note-taking.

The occasion was “Take Note,” a conference concluding a four-year initiative to explore the history and future of the book, sponsored by the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study here. The event attracted historians, literary scholars, psychologists and computer scientists, including more than a few “note-makers” (as the current terminology would have it) eager to play with the possibilities of paper and screen.

“I thought I’d take my notes in a new way today,” said Judith Davidson, an associate professor of education at the University of Massachusetts, Lowell, who was using Penultimate software and a stylus to inscribe cursive notes onto her iPad — when she wasn’t filling every bit of blank space with colorful abstract doodles, that is.

“I’m a felter, so sometimes I slip into thinking about felting,” she explained. “There are all these other things that go on in your head when you take notes.”