Overview of the Open Annotation Collaboration

Open Annotation CollaborationRob Sanderson, Herbert Van de Sompel

DMSS Meeting, May 14-15, Stanford, CA

Robert Sanderson – [email protected] [email protected]

Herbert Van de Sompel – [email protected] [email protected]

Digital Library Research and Prototyping TeamLos Alamos National Laboratory, USA

<http://www.openannotation.org/>

This research was funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. Acknowledgements: Tim Cole, Bernhard Haslhofer, Jane Hunter, Ray Larson, Cliff Lynch, Michael Nelson, Doug Reside



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Overview

• The Collaboration and Project

• Interoperability:• Basic Principles • Current Data Model• Protocol-less Approach



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The Collaboration

Partners:• Los Alamos National Laboratory

• University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

• University of Queensland

• University of Maryland

• George Mason University

• Plus: International Advisory Board

Discussion Group:• http://groups.google.com/group/oac-discuss• Open (moderated joins) list for community participation. Please join :)



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The Project

• Aims• Facilitate a Web-centric interoperable annotation environment• Demonstrate the proposed environment for scholarly use-cases• Seed adoption by deployment of high-visibility production systems

• Phase I• Funded by Mellon Foundation• Exploration of Existing Systems, Requirements and Use Case analysis• Initial Interoperability Specification• Integration of AXE and Zotero



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Interoperability: Basic Principles

• Effort focuses on Interoperability to allow annotation sharing• Many MANY non-interoperable annotation systems already• Existing interoperability mechanisms (eg Annotea) need updating

• Interoperability approach is based on the Architecture of the Web• Communication is increasingly online• Resources of interest are increasingly online• Maximize chance of adoption by not being domain-centric

• Entities within the model must be identified by HTTP URIs• … when possible• From Linked Data guidelines• Globally unique identifiers without central system overhead• Locator as well as Identifier: can retrieve representation



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Data Model: Step 1

An annotation is an event at a moment in time, initiated by an agent, with a source of content and a target. There is an implicit or explicit relationship between the source and target expressed by the annotation.

The Source of Content must have some relationship to the Target. By default, it should be somehow 'about' the Target for it to be considered an Annotation.



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Step 1: Baseline Model

As web resources, both Content and Target can be of any format, any (or no) language, etc.



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Step 2: Transcription Document

Must be able to transmit a description of the Annotation event.



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Step 3: Properties and Relationships

Properties and relationships can be attached to the Annotation and other resources.



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Step 3: Properties and Relationships



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Step 4: Versioning

As events, Annotations cannot be changed, but can be replaced with new versions.



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Step 4: Versioning



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Step 5: Inline Content

Important to be able to capture the content within the annotation transcription



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Step 5: Inline Content



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Step 6: Segments of Resources

W3C Media Fragment URIs allow us to create a URI that identifies a segment of a resource for common cases.



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Step 6b: Complex Segments

Some cases are more complex than can be described with Media Fragment URIs.



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Step 6b: Complex Segments



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Step 7: Multiple Targets

Note that the relationship from the Content applies to all of the Targets.



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Step 7: Multiple Targets



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Alpha Data Model



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Protocol-less Approach

Existing systems are tightly coupled: • The client sends the annotation to the server to store• The server sends the annotation to clients on request

Annotea is a REST protocol, Google Sidewiki uses ATOM plus extensions, most are proprietary.

We believe this is a hindrance to interoperability … any protocol that ties servers and clients together is a hindrance to interoperability from the Linked Data perspective.

We recommend no protocol, as opposed to not recommending a protocol.



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Breaking This Apart Promotes Interoperability:

• The client sends the annotation somewhere to store (or multiple places)

• The server retrieves the annotation• … using regular discovery/harvesting techniques (Pull)• … on demand from the client (Pull on demand)• … by being one of the places the client sends the annotation to (Push)

• The server is just one service that can send the annotation to clients on request



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Consequences:• Multiple servers, aggregators or other applications can access the annotation• The client can use whatever protocol is needed by the storage server(s)• Annotations are regular web resources by necessity• Access control is just like any other access control on the web

• Services can be used to extend information in annotation• Add extra information for robustness over time• Add extra information for robustness of segment location• Text Mining, Data Mining services• Graph/Relationship Mining across other annotations• …

• Servers can replace inline content with real web resources• Multiple servers can do this, and deduplicate with original identifier• Use well known owl:sameAs predicate for this



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Thank You

Thank You!

Questions?

Pointers:

• http://www.openannotation.org/

• http://groups.google.com/group/oac-discuss

• [email protected] ; [email protected]

Documents

Overview of the Open Annotation Collaboration