IntroductionAnnotations played a key role in the information-seeking process of an historical geographer, as observed during a nearly two-year collaboration. From the standpoint of an historical geographer's information requirements few studies appear to address this topic specifically --how do they become informed? Several resources touch upon issues related to historians' information behavior; describing the characteristics of source material (Brundage, 2002), research motives and methods (Case, 1991), historians' use of computers (Lewis & Lloyd-Jones, 1996), and the relationship between geography and history (Baker, 2003;Ogborn, 1999). There have been numerous books and articles written describing the characteristics of information, information behavior, information seeking, and information-use (Buckland, 1991;Case, 2002, Jarvelin & Wilson, 2003Marchionini, 1995;Wilson, 1999). One aspect of this research deals with the issue of information seeking in context (Dervin, 1997;Solomon, 2002) defined as the observation of an actual information-need and the processes undertaken by the 'seeker' to satisfy their need. In the context of this study, annotations were a crucial aid in the process of information discovery for the historical geographer.In this paper I first relate how the data in an historical database, used for gathering historical evidence, corresponds to the range of dimensions of annotation outlined by Marshall (1998). These annotations played a key role in the process of becoming informed, which corresponds nicely with Buckland's (1991) analysis of information-asprocess (or information-as-evidence) and MacMullen's (2005) paper correlating annotation-as-thing. I follow this with a synopsis of the ongoing collaboration between Rebecca Dobbs and me, an historical geographer and information scientist respectively, as we continued to incorporate changing information needs into a database to maintain her research objectives.
