RE: Work in Progress on a new Annotation Working Group Charter (Advance Notice)

Dear Ivan and Doug,

We expect this work to be a very relevant and useful initiative.

In the list of related W3C groups, we suggest to add the Media Annotation WG [1], which has been working on a basic metadata set for media content on the web [2], and a related API [3]. The metadata set has also been formalized as an OWL ontology, and the API proposes a JSON representation of the metadata. Thus we think that there is potential overlap with the work to be addressed by the Annotation WG.

Best regards,
Werner

[1] http://www.w3.org/2008/WebVideo/Annotations/

[2] http://www.w3.org/TR/2012/REC-mediaont-10-20120209/

[3] http://www.w3.org/2008/WebVideo/Annotations/drafts/API10/PR2/


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  Werner Bailer
  Audiovisual Media Group
  
  DIGITAL – Institute of Information and Communication Technologies
  
  JOANNEUM RESEARCH Forschungsgesellschaft mbH
  Steyrergasse 17, A-8010 Graz, AUSTRIA
 
  phone:  +43-316-876-1218            personal fax: +43-316-876-91218             
  mobile: +43-664-602-876-1218         general fax: +43-316-876-1191  
  web:    http://www.joanneum.at/digital        
  e-mail: mailto:werner.bailer@joanneum.at
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> -----Original Message-----
> From: Coralie Mercier [mailto:coralie@w3.org]
> Sent: Dienstag, 04. Februar 2014 12:04
> To: w3c-ac-members@w3.org
> Cc: public-annotation@w3.org
> Subject: Work in Progress on a new Annotation Working Group Charter (Advance
> Notice)
> 
> Dear Advisory Committee Representative,
> 
> This is an advance notice that the Team has started work on a charter for a
> Working Group supporting annotations in Web pages, in digital books and
> magazines, and other types of media on the Web.
> 
> Annotating, i.e., the act of creating associations between distinct pieces of
> information, is a widespread activity online in many guises but currently
> lacks a structured approach. Web citizens make comments about online resources
> using either tools built into the hosting web site, external web services, or
> the functionality of an annotation client.
> Readers of ebooks use the tools provided by reading systems to add and share
> their thoughts or highlight portions of texts. Comments about photos on
> Flickr, videos on YouTube, audio tracks on SoundCloud, people's posts on
> Facebook, or mentions of resources on Twitter could all be considered to be
> annotations associated with the resource being discussed.
> 
> The possibility of annotation is essential for many application areas. For
> example, it is standard practice for students to mark up their printed
> textbooks when familiarizing themselves with new materials; the ability to do
> the same with electronic materials (e.g., books, journal articles, or
> infographics) is crucial for the advancement of e-learning. Submissions of
> manuscripts for publication by trade publishers or scientific journals undergo
> review cycles involving authors and editors or peer reviewers; although the
> end result of this publishing process usually involves Web formats (HTML, XML,
> etc.), the lack of proper annotation facilities for the Web platform makes
> this process unnecessarily complex and time consuming. Communities developing
> specifications jointly, and published, eventually, on the Web, need to
> annotate the documents they produce to improve the efficiency of their
> communication.
> 
> There is a large number of closed and proprietary web-based “sticky note”
> and annotation systems offering annotation facilities on the Web or as part of
> ebook reading systems. The primary complaint about these is that the user-
> created annotations cannot be shared, reused in another environment, archived,
> and so on, due to a proprietary nature of the environments where they were
> created. The goal of this Working Group is to provide an open approach for
> annotation, making it possible for browsers, reading systems, JavaScript
> libraries, and other tools, to develop an annotation ecosystem where users
> have access to their annotations from various environments, can share those
> annotations, can archive them, and use them how they wish.
> 
> The mission of the Annotation Working Group, which we may propose to add to
> the Digital Publishing Activity, is to define a generic data model for
> annotations, and define the basic infrastructural elements to make it
> deployable in browsers and reading systems.
> 
> A draft charter is available (this is not a formal review, just an  early
> draft):
>     https://www.w3.org/2014/01/Ann-charter.html

> 
> The goal of this draft is to provide a framework for a public discussion on
> the creation of an annotation working group at w3c. We also anticipate getting
> community perspectives on the scope of this proposed charter at a Workshop on
> Annotation that W3C plans to organize in April, co-located with the I Annotate
> conference in San Francisco. The current plan is to finalize the charter soon
> after that event. Once the charter is finalized, it will be reviewed by the
> director and W3M and then sent to you for formal approval.
> 
> We welcome your comments and questions as well as general expressions of
> interest and support on <w3c-ac-forum@w3.org>, copied to <public-
> annotation@w3.org> (this is a public mailing list). You may also send comments
> directly to Ivan Herman <ivan@w3.org> or Doug Schepers <schepers@w3.org>.
> 
> This announcement follows section 6.2.2 of the Process Document:
>     http://www.w3.org/2005/10/Process-20051014/groups#WGCharterDevelopment

> 
> For Tim Berners-Lee, Director,
> Ralph Swick, Information and Knowledge Domain Lead, Ivan Herman, Digital
> Publishing Activity Lead; Coralie Mercier, W3C Communications
> 
> --
>   Coralie Mercier  -  W3C Communications Team  -  http://www.w3.org

> mailto:coralie@w3.org +336 4322 0001 http://www.w3.org/People/CMercier/

>

Received on Wednesday, 5 February 2014 09:44:33 UTC