Linked Data Annotation Without the Pointy Brackets: Introducing Recogito 2

Abstract

Recogito 2 is an open source annotation tool currently under development by Pelagios, an international initiative aimed at facilitating better linkages between online resources documenting the past. With Recogito 2, we aim to provide an environment for efficient semantic annotation-i.e. the task of enriching content with references to controlled vocabularies-in order to facilitate links between online data. At the same time, we address a perceived gap in the performance of existing tools, by emphasizing the development of mechanisms for manual intervention and editorial control that support the curation of quality data. While Recogito 2 provides an online workspace for general-purpose document annotation, it is particularly well-suited for geo-annotation, i.e. annotating documents with references to gazetteers, and supports the annotation of both texts and images (e.g. digitized maps). Already available for testing at http://recogito.pelagios.org, its formal release to the public is scheduled for December 2016. IntroductionAnnotation as a fundamental scholarly practice common across disciplines is well recognized (Unsworth 2000). The idea of adding notes or marginalia to documents goes back at least as far as the medieval manuscript, but it is in a digital context that annotation is emerging as a key means of facilitating research, by enabling scholars to organize, share and exchange knowledge, while working collaboratively 1 in the analysis and interpretation of source material (Barker and Terras 2016). This additional information can take various forms. Annotations provide enriched context by supplementing the document with information about provenance, composition and authorship in ways that better reflect a user's setting (Frisse 1987), or that can be exploited to improve search and retrieval in digital collections, in particular for lay users unfamiliar with domain-specific terminology (Hunter et al. 2008); they make transparent the structure of a document (e.g. the section demarcations of a text, such as book, chapter, paragraph, etc.), which can aid in its identification and analysis; or they may supply further detail about certain aspects of the content of the document that might be of assistance in its interpretation and understanding (Haslhofer et al. 2009). One such aspect, for example, are the places referred to in a document.Annotation of place names or other kinds of geographic entities (such as peoples, regions or natural features) can be an important first step in the analysis of many different kinds of historical documents, particularly travelogues, historiographical accounts and maps. It also plays a critical role in the Linked Open Data (Bizer et al. 2009)approach being developed by Pelagios, an international initiative aimed at 1 facilitating better linkage between online resources documenting the past, by using the places to which these documents refer. The ability to annotate the content of Web documents, however, has tended to be restricted to researchers with technical experti...

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