An Architecture for Open Cross-Media Annotation Services

Presentation given at WISE 2009, Tenth International Conference on Web Information Systems Engineering, Poznan, Poland.

ABSTRACT: The emergence of new media technologies in combination with enhanced information sharing functionality offered by the Web provides new possibilities for cross-media annotations. This in turn raises new challenges in terms of how a true integration across different types of media can be achieved and how we can develop annotation services that are sufficiently flexible and extensible to cater for new document formats as they emerge. We present a general model for cross-media annotation services and describe how it was used to define an architecture that supports extensibility at the data level as well as within authoring and visualisation tools.

Research paper: https://beatsigner.com/publications/an-architecture-for-open-cross-media-annotation-services.pdf

Transcript

1. 2 December 2005 An Architecture for Open Cross-Media Annotation Services Beat Signer1 and Moira C. Norrie2 Department of Computer Science Vrije Universiteit Brussel 1050 Brussels, Belgium Institute for Information Systems ETH Zurich 8092 Zurich, Switzerland 1 2
2. Beat Signer - Department of Computer Science - bsigner@vub.ac.be October 7, 2009 Motivation Memex Annotea Project Digital Libraries Cross-media Annotations
3. Beat Signer - Department of Computer Science - bsigner@vub.ac.be October 7, 2009 Motivation … ▪ Existing annotation solutions support the annotation of a fixed set of multimedia resources ▪ How easy can those solutions be extended to support emerging future digital or physical resource types? ▪ annotation tool should evolve over time ▪ An open cross-media annotation solution has to provide extensibility ▪ on the data level ▪ on the annotation authoring and access level (user interface)
4. Beat Signer - Department of Computer Science - bsigner@vub.ac.be October 7, 2009 What is an Annotation? ▪ A link in a hypermedia system is defined between an existing source and target object ▪ In addition to a link, the definition of an annotation often includes the content authoring of the annotation object itself (target object) ▪ An annotation service therefore can be seen as a specific application of a more general link service
5. Beat Signer - Department of Computer Science - bsigner@vub.ac.be October 7, 2009 Annotation Matrix ▪ Four existing classes of annotation systems ▪ A: single source and single annotation type ▪ B: single source and multiple annotation types ▪ C: multiple source and single annotation type ▪ D: multiple source and multiple annotation types ▪ Proposed open cross-media annotations cover the whole space # resource types 1 2 3 4 5 ... 1 2 3 4 5 ... # annotation types B1 B2 D2 open cross-media annotations D1 A1 ... An C1 C2 C3
6. Beat Signer - Department of Computer Science - bsigner@vub.ac.be October 7, 2009 Annotation Model (RSL Extension) Selectors Resources Entities Links XHTML Docs XPointer source target Layers Users SERVER i Movies Time Spans MOVIE i WEB i RSL Metamodel Annotations Annotation Model Formal Informal Comments Explanations ...
7. Beat Signer - Department of Computer Science - bsigner@vub.ac.be October 7, 2009 Annotation Model (RSL Extension) ... B. Signer and M. C. Norrie, As We May Link: A General Metamodel for Hypermedia Systems, in Proc. of ER 2007, Nov 2007 entity link Links selector resource (1,*) (1,*) (1,1) (0,*) (0,*) (0,*) RefersTo HasTarget HasSource partition HasProperties parameter Properties (0,*) (0,*) HasResolver contextResolver Context Resolvers Entities (0,*) (0,*) user Users parameter Preferences group Groups (0,*) (0,*) (0,*) (0,*) HasMembers AccessibleTo individual Individuals (0,*) (0,*) (1,1) partition Has Preferences (0,*) layer Layers OnLayer |HasLayers| (1,1) (0,*) (0,*) (0,*) |HasChild| (1,*) (0,*) link Structural Links link Navigational Links partition link Annotations CreatedBy Resources Selectors
8. Beat Signer - Department of Computer Science - bsigner@vub.ac.be October 7, 2009 Data and Visual Plug-in Architecture Annotation/Link Service Client Application Annotation/Link Browser & Editor Visual Plug-ins Resource Plug-in Repository Data Plug-ins Visual Plug-ins Data Plug-ins Visual Plug-ins
9. Beat Signer - Department of Computer Science - bsigner@vub.ac.be October 7, 2009 Data and Visual Plug-in Architecture … ▪ Integration of a new resource type includes ▪ development of a data plug-in ▪ implementation of a visual plug-in ▪ registration with the resource plug-in repository ▪ Annotation/Link browser loads plug-ins on demand ▪ internal or external (third party application) visualisation ▪ Third party applications use the annotation/link browser for annotation visualisation ▪ similar to the integration of third-party applications with web browsers ▪ Non-monolithic annotation model and authoring tool ▪ resource-specific plug-ins
10. Beat Signer - Department of Computer Science - bsigner@vub.ac.be October 7, 2009 Visual Plug-ins Annotation/Link Browser & Editor Client Application showEntity(), getSelectedEntity() showEntity()
11. Beat Signer - Department of Computer Science - bsigner@vub.ac.be October 7, 2009 Visual Plug-ins … ▪ General annotation tool deals only with RSL-specific data and not with any media-specific details ▪ create/delete links, user management, … ▪ Definition of annotation anchors (resources or selectors) handled by visual plug-ins ▪ separation of concerns ▪ Two basic purposes ▪ rendering of specific resource types (resources and selectors) ▪ creation and deletion of resources and selectors ▪ Well defined visual plug-in API
12. Beat Signer - Department of Computer Science - bsigner@vub.ac.be October 7, 2009 Conclusions ▪ Extensible open cross-media annotation solution ▪ plug-ins loaded on demand ▪ Separation of concerns between ▪ annotation model and resource-specific data plug-ins ▪ annotation tool and resource-specific visual plug-ins ▪ No distinction between entities that can be used as sources or annotations ▪ annotations and links as first-class objects ▪ Annotation/Link browser and editor can be integrated with third party applications
13. Beat Signer - Department of Computer Science - bsigner@vub.ac.be October 7, 2009 Further Information ▪ Beat Signer, Fundamental Concepts for Interactive Paper and Cross-Media Information Spaces, ISBN 978-3-8370-2713-6, May 2008 ▪ https://beatsigner.com