Presented at I Annotate 3 April 2014

1. Supporting Open Scholarly Annotation
Anna Gerber
ITEE eResearch Group
The University of Queensland

2. Image: Robbery under arms / Rolf Boldrewood ; edited by P.Eggert and E. Webby, University of Queensland Press, St. Lucia, Qld, 2006
Scholarly Editions
Apparatus
• Provide accurate reading texts of
works of literary, historical,
theological or philosophical
significance
• They contain:
• historical and textual essays,
• explanatory notes,
• appendixes e.g. glossary
• a scholarly apparatus that
provides access to alternative
readings in other versions of
the work

3. Scholarly Editing Annotation Use Cases
• Facilitate collaborative discussion of texts, sources and
facsimiles
– Comments
– Questions
– Replies
• Describe textual variation for apparatus – annotations linking
multiple versions
• Align parts of transcriptions and facsimile images
• Record notes
– Textual notes (about production of text)
– Explanatory notes (meaning, historical context etc)
– Link texts with facsimiles, reference secondary sources

4. Tools: lorestore
lorestore Annotation Repository
Search, query, display, validate & subscribe to annotations & resource maps
Supports public and private annotations
Web UI to administer
content and users
Optionally manage
user accounts and
permissions or hook
into existing accounts
system e.g. drupal

5. Annotation Validation
• Validation
service to
check
constraints
from the core
spec
• Validation rules
implemented
as SPARQL 1.1
queries

6. SPARQL endpoint

7. REST API
• REST API for creating,
retrieving, updating,
deleting and querying
annotations & resource
maps
• Supports multiple
serialisations e.g.
RDF/XML, JSON-LD
• Documented in
developer docs built into
lorestore web UI
• Atom feeds for query
results
eResearch Australasia 2012

8. Annotation views

9. AustESE Workbench
eResearch Australasia 2013
• Transcriptions
rendered to HTML
from TEI/XML or plain
text:
• View Resource
page
• Reading View
•Rendered from MVD:
• Compare View
• Table Apparatus
• Export to PDF
• Export to Word
• Etc.
•Images at different
zoom levels

10. Challenges
• Support the various types of annotation required
by scholarly editors
• Annotate regions of text or images regardless of
rendered view
– E.g. HTML rendered directly from TEI vs as rendered
via collation tool, Images viewed directly vs images
displayed through lightbox tool
• Allow annotation while transcriptions are still
being edited/corrected
• Query and display annotations of text selections,
textual variation across versions
– When large sections text might have been transposed
• Restrict Annotation to certain parts of site

11. Tools: Annotator
AustESE Annotator
• JavaScript Annotation client
• Extends OKFN Annotator
• Create, edit & display basic
annotations

12. AustESE Annotator Plugins
LoreStore
Maps the internal JSON data structure used to
represent annotations in the Annotator system
to an equivalent OA JSON-LD serialization. Also
implements a protocol for communicating with
our OA-compliant annotation repository.
Image
Enables the selection and annotation of
rectangular regions of images
CharacterRange
Calculates character offsets and text selections
used to identify the part of the (text-based)
resource being annotated across
representations.
Motivation
Allows users to attach custom Motivations (e.g.
ExplanatoryNote, TextualNote, Glossary) to
annotations.
Reply
Enables discussion between editors, scholars
and readers.
Prov
Records and displays provenance (creator,
creation time) for an Annotation.

13. Extending OA Motivation

14. Motivations Annotator Plugin

15. Explanatory Note Model

16. Reply Annotator Plugin
eResearch Australasia 2012

17. Model for Replies

18. Reply RDF
<http://austese.net/lorestore/oa/5E080F7E12D492FA> {
<http://austese.net/lorestore/oa/5E080F7E12D492FA> a oa:Annotation ;
dc:language "en" ;
dc:title "Re: Amen" ;
oa:motivatedByoa:replying ;
oa:annotatedAt "2012-03-26T16:34:47.673+10:00"^^dcterms:W3CDTF ;
oa:hasBody<urn:uuid:E20D57674C0B45769D6B20C72560E418> ;
oa:hasTarget<http://austese.net/lorestore/oa/2DA0F9596B3BA7B6> .
<urn:uuid:E20D57674C0B45769D6B20C72560E418> a cnt:ContentAsText ;
cnt:characterEncoding "UTF-8" ;
cnt:chars "While not deemed suitable for The BulnBuln and the Brolga, this passage is
significant to the argument of Such is Life (1898). Furphy is much more concerned
with exploring the 'fiction of facts' and the 'facts of fiction' in the typescript version.
Returned to their previous context, the unrevised sections of the BulnBuln and the
Brolga perform a different function in a significantly different narrative." .
}

19. Image Annotator Plugin

20. Using the Plugins
jQuery(el).annotator({'bindToDocument': true})
.annotator('addPlugin', 'Image')
.annotator('addPlugin', 'Prov')
.annotator('addPlugin', 'CharRangeSelection')
.annotator('addPlugin', 'LoreStore')
.annotator('addPlugin', 'Reply')
.annotator('addPlugin', 'Motivations', {
"showField": false, // will display via provplugin instead
"motivations": [
{ value: "oa:Commenting", label: "Comment"},
{ value: "oa:Questioning", label: "Question" },
{ value: "austese:TextualNote", label: "Textual Note" },
…
eResearch Australasia 2012

21. DrupalPlugin
• Drupal 7 plugin to integrate
AustESE annotator plugins
with the AustESE Workbench
– Loads and configures
Annotator and plugins for all
transcriptions and content
images
– Provides search UI
– Adds HTML5 data attributes to
identify transcriptions and
images (independently of
format or page URI)

22. Tools: lore
eResearch Australasia 2012
lore Annotation Client
• Firefox add-on
• create, edit, search, browse annotations
and resource maps

23. Open Source
• Annotation server
– lorestore
• https://github.com/uq-eresearch/lorestore
• Annotation clients
– lore
• https://github.com/uq-eresearch/lore
– AustESE Annotator Plugins
• https://github.com/uq-eresearch/annotator
– Drupalplugin
• https://github.com/uq-eresearch/austese_annotations
See http://uq-eresearch.github.io/AustESE/
Contact: Anna Gerber <a.gerber@uq.edu.au>