Annotags: a Decentralized Textual Annotation Protocol
Jonathan Reeve
24 July 2015
Conversations in the Margins
Problems
- How can we tweet about specific parts of a book?
#HarryPotterAndTheSorcerer'sStonePage23Paragraph11
isn't practical.
- How can we write in the margins of ebooks?
- How can we have conversations in the margins?
Centralized Solutions
- CommentPress, Socialbook, Annotation Studio, Ebrary
- Annotations live on the central server.
- The size of the virtual margins are limited by the structure of the web page.
Example
Anatomy of an Annotag
#iXeBz:p23
- First letter connotes the type of bibliographic identifier (ISBN, OCLC, short DOI).
- Following letters contain the identifier, encoded in base-62 for brevity.
- Suffix contains a human-readable text location. Here, page 23.