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By David Rothman

AnnozillaSomething wonderful happened to the TeleBlog when I added comments.

Partly because I did, traffic multiplied–increasing the value of the blog with new facts and extra insights. The comments are part of the WordPress database, and I wouldn’t have it any other way. Roland, Branko, Robert, Dan, Quinn, Garson, Sadi, Marcus, others, thank you!

Lines have blurred between commenters and formal contributors–in fact, most of this blog’s authors started out as commenters and continue at it. The TeleBlog is a series of conversations rather than broadcasts.

But what to do about e-books? Shouldn’t e-book standards extend beyond a core format and encompass reader comments, too? Better, what if the same comments could show up simultaneously on the Web as well and allow linking in one big universe, at least when authors and publishers and commenters favored an open approach?

Well, as a matter of fact, digital annotations are hardly new, and especially I’m intrigued by the Annotea project (helpful PDF here), as well as the related Annozilla efforts. Jon Noring and I and others are investigating the possibility of the OpenReader Consortium picking up or enriching these standards. One way or another, standards for annotations are a must. OSoft, our first implementer, which has been doing e-book annotations for several years, is open-minded. Who wants Adobe, Microsoft or another of the usual suspects to control annotation standards? I’d encourage you to share your thoughts. Among other requirements–this list is just a start–here’s what I myself would like in an annotations spec and implementations.

–Provisions for a universal spec that would encompass not just e-books but every conceivable digital object, from Moby Dick to a JPEG of Herman Melville or the sounds of a whale. The spec would promote interoperabilty of all kinds and open source applications to edit and view the annotations. In a follow-up post, Jon will expand on this universal concept and go far, far beyond e-books. The new Web could offer more of a social vision, with greater focus on bringing people together, not just integrating content from different sites.

–The ability to turn off comments and other forms of annotations, so that they don’t distract from the main text. Even when displayed, they ideally won’t overwhelm more than necessary.

–An easy interface for both reading and writing annotations.

–Web/e-book capability, so that books can pick up comments from the Web and vice versa. There should be a network of servers to store the comments permanently.

–The ability of books to pull in annotations from different sources.

–Full-strength metadata capability for those wanting it, along with the related filtering it will make possible. Readers should be able to call up annotations by book, precise topic, comment author, level of authority, and so on.

–Provisons for moderation as needed.

–The ability to do annotations of annotations.

–Easy updating through Wiki-style interface–plus the ability to see old versions. The Wikipedia is awesome. Not only can you read old versions of pages, but you can compare them line by line, a “must.”

–The ability of authors to delete their comments, at least in a certain period of time–just so records are kept of deletions. Jon Noring doesn’t want anything to be deletable. A compromise might be to send the comments to an archive from which they would not be accessible for X number of years. I don’t know. Snoopy ‘crats out of D.C. might well insist on access to the archives.

–Lack of dependence on a for-profit vendor. I certainly want the annotations to be available to Google, Amazon or other companies for indexing and mining. But do we want to entrust storage and access to them? Already Amazon is already allowing annotations of various e-books, but it’s a proprietary island.

–Perhaps some kind of a systematized tie-in of annotations with social networking–with open source software. In some ways annotations are social networks in disguise. I can appreciate this from a blog perspective–some of my best relationships with other bloggers have happened by my watching or their watching referrer files. Annotations should pave the way for social networking, based on shared ideas and values.

All right, so what do you think should be in the spec and implementations; and what are some applications-related ideas–both inside and outside the world of e-books? Go ahead! Enrich the TeleBlog database with your insights–looking ahead to the time when perhaps someday your can even use the blog to create annotations for the e-books you specify. Much of this may overlap with past thoughts from my friends over at the if:book blog–being used to explain and track the Sophie project–and I’d love to hear from them.

 
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