Annotation Studio is a suite of collaborative web-based annotation tools currently under development at MIT.
Historical Background
As a cultural and social practice, annotations have a rich history
stretching back for millennia. The term marginalia, coined by Coleridge –
a notable annotator – refers to writing in the margins of a book.
Writing in books leaves traces of a reader’s progress, a reader’s
interpretation, a reader’s response. Marginalia can record the
collaborative efforts of many readers, as in this image of a page from
Venetus A, a tenth-century manuscript of the Iliad that preserves layers
of glosses, scholia, and critical marks. This annotated manuscript
immortalizes the critical discourse around a text, and makes it possible
to study it, a thousand years later. Readers also interact with their
books in ways other than writing in the margins. Today, post-its or
folded pages, for example, mark passages of interest. A common practice
is to color-code these passages of interest. Personal organization is an
alternative way of accessing the text, a more personal organization
than the pre-defined taxonomy of the table of contents.
Annotation Studio in the Digital Humanities
The most significant difference between Annotation Studio and other
digital annotation projects is its emphasis on student-centered design
and pedagogy. Most other annotation tools assume user familiarity with
TEI, and a well-developed understanding of the relationships between
literary sources, manuscripts, editions, and adaptations. Annotation
Studio makes sophisticated yet easy-to-use commenting tools immediately
accessible to students with no prior experience with close textual
analysis or TEI.
However, while we believe Annotation Studio provides many unique
affordances, we also see it as part of a larger conversation concerning
annotation in the digital humanities. Accordingly, we have listed
what we think are some of the most exciting projects occupying the
annotation space, which bear both similarities and differences to the
aims and formal qualities of our tool.
The AWOL Index: The bibliographic data presented herein has been programmatically extracted from the content of AWOL - The Ancient World Online (ISSN 2156-2253) and formatted in accordance with a structured data model.
AWOL is a project of Charles E. Jones, Tombros Librarian for Classics and Humanities at the Pattee Library, Penn State University
AWOL began with a series of entries under the heading AWOL on the Ancient World Bloggers Group Blog. I moved it to its own space here beginning in 2009.
The primary focus of the project is notice and comment on open access material relating to the ancient world, but I will also include other kinds of networked information as it comes available.
The ancient world is conceived here as it is at the Institute for the Study of the Ancient World at New York University, my academic home at the time AWOL was launched. That is, from the Pillars of Hercules to the Pacific, from the beginnings of human habitation to the late antique / early Islamic period.
AWOL is the successor to Abzu, a guide to networked open access data relevant to the study and public presentation of the Ancient Near East and the Ancient Mediterranean world, founded at the Oriental Institute, University of Chicago in 1994. Together they represent the longest sustained effort to map the development of open digital scholarship in any discipline.
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