User:Simon/Reading, Writing & Research Methodologies SI9

IFL introductions

Profiling shadow libraries: aaaaarg.fail, ubuweb & Project Gutenberg

Annotations 08.05.19

How can annotation be useful to us, and a third party?

Possible ways:

Keep text and annotations together

- scan and overlay transparencies (more like a graphical representation but perhaps not very readable)

- write, re-write, cut and paste the annotations in a bigger paper all together

- use the annotation bot (a digital tool)(it would be cool if you could underline, etc - yes! including graphic elements)

- if digital, create the possibility to turn on and off the annotations to keep the original text

- bind the pages into books and make a bootleg library with them

Separate text and annotations (deconstruction / structure analysis)

- only underlined text (in many ways: lines, circles, waves...)

- list of questions, tags, notes + composition and mapping of them (different mapping techniques)

- historical timeline

- only drawings?

- free graphical interpretation

Computer driven annotation

- scrape the text (words processing)

- pattern recognition

- delete all articles and implicit elements

Combine the above possibilities

- overlay of analog annotations to represent "heat patterns" (parts of the text with lots of/little engagement), as well as a digital version that is more legible

HOW DO I KNOW WHAT I AM READING? We are discussing form how do we talk about content?

How do you make the content readable for others?

How do you communicate what you're interpreting?

Outlining content of workshops 22.05.19

a) what purpose does annotation serve (in your case)?

Annotations in the form of accumulative traces of reader's interactions with texts underline the sociability of libraries - not just collections of knowledge but discourse around them; [How?] dispels notions of the singular, authority and property in favour of collectivity and plurality and highlights the social construction of knowledge

b) what does it do for the reader (in your case)?

Simon: Annotation affirms the idea that a text is part of a discourse - not in isolation from other texts/writers - and that knowledge is socially constructed. Annotation is a way for a reader to become visible to others and part of this discourse. It avoids authorship, and singular notions of knowledge production.

c) what does it do for the annotators (in your case)?

Simon: In my case, the annotators are the readers. Annotation exists as an action in response to the text, or to existing annotations. It can be idiosyncratic, and readable only to the annotator, therefore revealing (some) elements of how that particular person interprets the text. But, more often there are unspoken conventions to the types of annotations typically used, e.g. underlining, highlighting, circling, asterisks, dots etc. These can be defined by the technical limitations of the technology used, or linguistic (and typographic) conventions. This commonality begins to create a shared vocabulary through which readers read each other's responses to texts (here "read" can mean interpret, or access, like a file).

YOUR PROJECT 4) look at your project descriptions and use them as a basis to make a plan a) define your aim [see above] b) what needs to be done? c) make a timetable d) what needs to be developed further? e) who can help you? and how? f) consider how you can organise your upcoming methods sessions (5 & 19 June) so they can help you realise your aim.

General question: what is the interface to your part the project. OR How do you invite people in to your project?

first workshop plan - a notation system

"do you read me?" / "a notation system"

- identifying and naming (typo)graphical annotation methods, transcribe them to various media (digital and analog), translating/transcribing each other's systems

- what happens when an action (e.g. writing, drawing) becomes a thing (e.g. a signature, a direction), or when a thing (e.g. a word/annotation) becomes an action (e.g. a performance)?

- can accumulated traces of readership allow users of pirate libraries to be visible but maintain anonymity, therefore consolidating the argument for legitimacy?

Practical ideas for workshop(s):

analog (printed) texts:

transcribing:

- identify and examine various systems of notation (music manuscripts, stage directions from a play/film, choreographic score for dance)

- transcribe these between different media (e.g. stage directions for a PDF, choreographic score for a printout of an essay)

translating:

- identify various analog methods of annotating texts (using pens etc.), and name them

- use one (or more) systems to annotate a text

performing:

- collective performance of texts with annotations - how do readers read/perform these annotations?

digital texts:

digitising:

- choose an annotated page from a book (if at Leeszaal), scan it and use Tesseract to OCR the page

- explore the output html of the page, and see what happens to the annotations

retaining:

- using provided, annotated PDFs (e.g. Borges - Garden of Forking Paths, Le Guin - Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction) - see how annotations can be retained, accumulated

Tool(s)? OCR (Tesseract), pens, paper, computers, scanner(s), printers

aim?

to establish lexicon(s) of graphic annotation, ways to identify and define these, and to translate them (e.g. from analogue to digital, from writer to reader)

new knowledge?

(possibly) using tools (such as OCR) to establish interpretations of graphic annotations, ways to retain these traces (or translations of them) when texts are digitised, (i'd reallly like to develop some tools for this), new/different semantic understandings of annotations shared by participants

role of annotation?

to discover what is common or diverse in our experience of reading (and annotating) texts, and also to examine the sociability around these texts - annotation as a way of comprehending not just texts but also those who read them