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Annotating electronic documents

Can it be made as useful as annotating paper documents?

Peter Brown and Heather Brown

University of Exeter, UK

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Reading and Writing

The two basic skills – often combined Writing-while-reading

making notes on important points for later reference each note is attached to a fragment of the original

document (called its ‘anchor’)

Reading-while-writing finding and incorporating ideas from existing work

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Writing-while-reading— paper documents

Annotating — scribbling notes/diagrams in the margin easy to create . . . . . . but difficult to find and use later … and can be difficult to share

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Annotations on PaperWordsworth’s ‘Prelude’

Remembrance Agents and Margin Notes annotations suggest documents relevant to one

being written add annotations to document being read

User controls essential to avoid nuisance

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Writing-while-reading— electronic documents

Annotating — adding electronic notes tedious to create (via word processors or

specialised annotation programs) . . . . . . but can be searched and retrieved easily

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Existing annotation systems For web pages:

Annotea from the Web Consortium designed for shared annotation not (yet) a success

Commercial products like iMarkup (offers text or voice annotations, categories, searching, … )

Enhanced browsers, e.g. Opera Other:

Word (and PowerPoint?) Acrobat (too low-level for some applications) Publishing systems, e.g. Journal of Universal

Computer Science

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Annotea

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Reading-while-writing— paper documents

Reading other paper documents while writing to find ideas/material tedious to incorporate material into new

document there are conventional ways (citations) to

record where material came from

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Reading-while-writing— electronic documents

Reading other documents while writing to find ideas/material easy to incorporate material via cut-and-paste can include links to original source documents

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Improving the Electronic World

The vision — providing integrated electronic annotation facilities (that improve on the paper world)

Identifying opportunities and threats

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Opportunity 1Proactive suggestions

Remembrance Agents and Margin Notes annotations suggest documents relevant to the

one being written … or to document being read

Controls are essential to avoid nuisance

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Remembrance AgentProactive suggestions while writing

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Margin NotesProactive suggestions while reading

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Opportunity 2Lifelong Annotations

Annotations are there to be re-read Annotations stored in a repository can be

searched, arranged, selectively retrieved, etc They lead to anchors in the original

documents

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3 Threats

(1) Annotations on paper are much easier

… and reading from paper is easier too

(2) Breaking the flow

(3) Change

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Opportunity 3The Digital Desk: bringing the paper

and digital worlds together

Allows electronic annotation of paper documents recognises paper on the desk matches text on page to electronic version projects annotations onto document being read allows new electronic annotations to be made

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Alice Book

Available as SGML

text and book

Used for simple

grammar lesson

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Alice Book

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Alice SGML Text

<w VBD>was <w AT0>a <w NN1>piece <w PRF>of

<w NN1>paper <w PRP>with <w AT0>the <w NN2>words

<w VVB>DRINK <w NN1>ME <w PRP>in <w AJ0>large

<w NN2>letters<c PUN>.

</p>

<p><s n=063>

<w CJC>But<w NP0>Alice <w VBD>was <w AT0>a

<w AJ0>careful <w NN1>girl<c PUN>.

<s n=064>

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Active Alice GrammarNouns

Nouns Nouns are words for things (cat, house, star, nose policeman, ship). Most nouns have a singular and a plural form. The common ways to turn a singular noun into its plural form are to add ‘s’ or ‘es’ (cat/cats, dish/dishes) but some have unusual plurals (pony/ponies, foot/feet) and some do not change (aircraft, sheep). More about nouns Proper nouns (names) More examples Show me the nouns in the book

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Active Alice GrammarNouns

was a piece of paper with the words DRINK ME in large

letters.

But Alice was a careful girl. ‘It can be dangerous to

drink out of strange bottles, she said. ‘What will it do to

me? She drank a little bit slowly. The taste was very

nice, like chocolate and oranges and hot sweet coffee,

and very soon Alice finished the bottle.

* * *

‘What a strange feeling!’ said Alice. ‘I think I’m getting

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Opportunity 4Multiple/Shared Annotations(without the CSCW baggage!)

Multiple sets of annotations can be relevant for one document

Collaborative (CSCW) systems are useful but carry heavy overheads

Personal annotations — with provision for multiple sets provide most of the advantages

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Active Alice GrammarAdjectives+Nouns

was a piece of paper with the words DRINK ME in large

letters.

But Alice was a careful girl. ‘It can be dangerous to

drink out of strange bottles, she said. ‘What will it do to

me? She drank a little bit slowly. The taste was very

nice, like chocolate and oranges and hot sweet coffee,

and very soon Alice finished the bottle.

* * *

‘What a strange feeling!’ said Alice. ‘I think I’m getting

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Opportunity 5Generalised Annotations to

include in-line editing

Annotations can be ‘enhancements’ or ‘edits’

Flexible user interfaces could allow annotations to be displayed out-of-line (enhancements) or in-line (edits)

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Opportunity 6Annotations with data types

Types provide an easy way to handle multiple sets of annotations

Hierarchy and aggregation of types is desirable

Our experiments show that types (and metadata in general) add richness and help with retrieval methods

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Opportunity 7Automatically capturing

users’ needs

The information explosion can be partially tamed by using agents to help to tailor systems to users’ needs. Amazon.com and many others already do this, though only on their own data.

Capturing a user’s history — including annotations — can aid this

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Threat 3 — revisitedIssues of Change

Annotations are typically saved separately from the original document — thus, over time, the anchor can change or disappear

… in this case should annotations move (try to find the updated anchor, if any) or disappear?

How useful are ‘dangling annotations’?

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Annotation in publishing

Materials: journal articles, book proposals, book drafts, on-line published documents

Referee’s comments: Low-level comments can be represented as

annotations High-level comments, e.g. ‘The paper is

verbose’ can link to examples, e.g. to some especially verbose paragraphs

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Referee’s comments (continued)

may need to merge different referees’ comments

… and attach past referees’ comments to revised submissions

need to transmit between author, editor and referee

need to have ‘data types’ to distinguish different types of comment , e.g. public/private

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Annotation in publishing (continued)

Proof reader’s corrections: can these be regarded as ‘edit’ annotations? are they fundamentally different from referee’s

comments?

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Annotation in publishing (continued)

Post-publishing embellishment of on-line journals: readers’ comments and suggestions author’s subsequent corrections and additions

‘these results are now supported by …’ need for simultaneous shared annotations need for control over excessive/rogue postings?

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Annotation in publishing (continued)

Adding value: e.g. Crick & Watson’s original double helix

paper with an expert’s commentary/explanation added as annotation

searching all annotations for certain terms

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SummaryThe Main Opportunities

Adding convenience and adding value in electronic publishing

Use generalised annotations covering edits and enhancements

Make use of proactive annotations, repositories, and types/metadata

Use annotations to help capture users’ needs, and to exploit new technology bringing paper and electronic documents together