User:Simon/Annotation typologies

traces of book use in from the books

Typologies of traces of use identified from a previous project, which explored books from the 000-099 section of the Redmond Barry Reading Room in the State Library of Victoria.

User:Simon/From_the_Books:_SLV_RBRR_000-099

ACCIDENTAL DOG-EAR
ANNOTATION
ASTERISK
BOOK PRICE
BOOKMARK
CIRCLED TEXT
CREASED PAGE
CROSS
DEAD ANT
DOG-EAR
ERASER RUBBING
ERRATA
FINGERPRINT
FOLD
HANDWRITTEN LETTER
INK BLOT
LIBRARY DOCUMENT
LIFTED PRINT
LINE
LOOSE PAGE
NOTEPAPER BOOKMARK
NOTES
PAGES REMOVED
POST-IT NOTE
RECEIPT BOOKMARK
REPLACED IMAGE
SCUFF
SMUDGE
SQUIGGLE
STAIN
STRIKETHROUGH
TICK
TORN PAGE
TORN PAPER BOOKMARK
UNDERLINING
WARPED PAGE
WEAR AND TEAR

These formed a loose classification system that indexed these books not by bibliographic reference, but by the frequency of occurrence, taking a "bag of words" approach. Problems that arose were linguistic - it was difficult assigning a word to an example as this already had some assumption of intention (e.g. a doodle as an intentional drawing vs squiggle as unintentional drawing).

thoughts and reflections

Whereas my previous approach was one of identification based on nouns, which presented problems. In a sense, to name something is to own it. Things become property much more easily than actions. Perhaps a different approach of identifying actions may be more open and associative than a noun-based classification scheme.