researchers annotation collections and practices

Procedia Technology 11 ( 2013 ) 354 – 358

2212-0173 © 2013 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.Selection and peer-review under responsibility of the Faculty of Information Science & Technology, Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia.doi: 10.1016/j.protcy.2013.12.202

The 4th International Conference on Electrical Engineering and Informatics (ICEEI 2013)

Researchers Annotation Collections and Practices Zaihosnita Hood*, Noraidah Sahari@Ashaari

Faculty of Information Science And Technology, Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia, 43600 Bangi, Selangor, Malaysia.

Abstract

This paper discusses about the relationship between active reading and annotation and how it could benefits researchers in managing their personal annotation collections. Definitions of active reading and annotation from previous researchers are examined. Annotation plays an important role to support active reading processes especially among researchers. The way annotation is being captured and written need to be properly identified, manage, store, link and share to make it relevant to fulfill the purpose of sharing, reuse and enrich information and knowledge. Based on review of previous studies and discussions, architecture for annotator’s environment and annotation lifecycle was constructed, some important issue are identified and gathered. This study proposes an initial annotation classification model. © 2013 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V. Selection and peer-review under responsibility of the Faculty of Information Science and Technology, Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia.

Keywords: Active Reading; Annotation; Researcher; Classification

1. Introduction

This paper discusses definitions of active reading and annotation, previous researches related to annotation, and proposed annotation classification model that will helps researchers in the process of managing their annotation collections. Researcher’s main task not only organize and carry out research, they also read academic documents for instance; books, reports, conference paper, dissertation, research article, technical report, thesis, bulletin and review

* Corresponding author. Tel.: +6-038-921-6710; fax: +6-038-925-6732.

E-mail address: [email protected]

Available online at www.sciencedirect.com

© 2013 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.Selection and peer-review under responsibility of the Faculty of Information Science & Technology, Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia.

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355 Zaihosnita Hood and Noraidah Sahari@Ashaari / Procedia Technology 11 ( 2013 ) 354 – 358

a numbers of articles. At the same time, researcher need to read, write, discuss, publish and present their research report and article in order to share their knowledge and interact with other researchers and scholars. To fulfill all these tasks, researchers as an active reader might perform certain reading practice in order to manage their reading collections in proper manner. The objective of this paper is to discuss the relationship between active reading and annotation with supporting findings from previous researches that will enable a construction of an annotation classification model.

According to McWhorter, active reader reads with pencil in hand, do some highlighting, writing notes, and mark a vocabulary [1], searching, compare, non-sequential navigation [2], constructively engaged by question, confirm, judge [3], and slow down their reading by annotating [4]. A simple way for an active reader to support active reading is by capturing annotation [5], getting engage and interact with text in a physical way, using pencil, pen and highlighter to annotate [6]. Several active reading definitions have been identified and referred to in the literature (see Table. 1.).

Table 1. Active Reading Definition.

Literature Active Reading Definition K. O'Hara and A. Sellen, 1997 [7]Involves four main processes: annotation, extract content, navigation, and layout Schilit, Golovchinsky, & Price, 1998

[8]Frequency of reading is not just looking at the words on paper, but the rule, visibility, and comment on the same paper or sheets. Combination of reading with critical thinking and active learning is called active reading.

Porter-O'Donnell, 2004 [4]Annotating help readers reach a deeper level of engagement and promotes active reading

Morris, Brush, & Meyers, 2007 [9]Involve processes such as annotation, highlighting, outlining, note taking, comparing and searching through pages

Aubert & Prié, 2007 [10]Process that generally produces reusable annotations on documents to crawl, navigation, revaluations and other

Craig & Edwards, 2011 [2]Often involves searching through, visibility, comparison, navigation and such activities are not sequential

It is believed that active reading involves a set of sequential or non-sequential processes by the reader with the

intention of identifying a useful and potential information and knowledge that can benefit certain purposes. Next section will discuss more about annotation’s meaning, anatomy, forms and functions, lifecycle and purposes.

2. Annotation forms, functionality, and purpose

Annotation can be define as note, notation, comment, gloss, footnote, commentary, explanation, and interpretation [11]. “Annotation not only a way of explaining and enriching an information resources with personal observations, but also a means of transmitting and sharing ideas to improve collaborative work practice” [12]. Marshall sees annotation as a key way to grow hypertexts and increase in value [13], and as a tangible reflection for reader to engage with the text [14]. Descriptive annotation shows a content of a book or article and indicate distinctive features, critical annotation is an additional information to describe contents and the usefulness of a book or article for particular situations [15]. Porter-O'Donnell mentioned, annotating or marking text are a way of identifying important information and record the readers ideas [4].

As explained by Bélanger, anatomy of annotation that has been expended by Marshall in her book entitled Reading and Writing the Electronic Book (2009), composed of three basic elements; a body (notation or content that user adds to the source material) , an anchor ( scope of the annotation and reveals the link between the source document and the added content), and a marker (indicates how the anchor should be rendered when displayed) [16]. According to Choochaiwattana, “In context of annotation systems, anchor can be referred as position, area or time range to which an annotation on an artifact is directed. Its form depends on the form of artifact. In a document, anchor text is the series of characters associated with the anchor” [17].


Survey by Ovsiannikov, Arbib & McNeill listed annotation forms as mark up, write on margins, write at the top, write separately, and write between lines [18]. Marshall annotation forms describe as short notes within text, in blank space and extended notes [13]. All this forms might relates to one or more of the notation strategies for example: underline, highlight, circle, stars, drawing, asterisk, starts, checks [6] [19], margin bar, lasso, crop marks, stitching marks [5], boxes, triangles, cloud, connection, bracket, own code, exclamation mark [4]. Annotation made by the reader is to meet certain functions such as; to remember, think, clarify, share [18], as a procedural signal, place mark and aid to memory, in situ way of working problem, record of interpretive activity, an incidental [14], for discussion, an d essay writing or exams [6]. Annotation may also accomplish reading goals as identified by O’Hara; a) reading to learn, b) reading to self-inform, c) reading to search/answer questions, d) reading for research, e) reading to summarize, f) reading for discussion, g) proof-reading, h) reading to write and revise documents, i) reading for critical review, j) reading to apply, and k) reading for problem solving and decision making [20].

Annotation lifecycle involving the creation and use of annotation revealed by Bélanger consists of eight activities; trigger, capture, transfer, maintain, refer, complete, discard, and archive. Readers with targeted reading of source material towards the end of the research project have a tendency to forego the transfer, maintain, and refer activities [16]. A principle purpose of article reading identified through Carol and King (2007) survey are for research, teaching, writing, current awareness and others [21]. It is believed that annotation is a way to capture and write potential information and evidence to support agreement and disagreement to meet certain purposes. Different notation strategies can be used to capture and write triggered information.

3. Guide and Value of Article Reading

This section explains guide and value during article reading from previous researches. O’Hara, identify that it is important to annotate and taking notes during reading digitally or on printed document [7]. Annotation can be written or find on the same source of document (any available space, mark up, write on margins, write at the top, and write between lines [18]) or different paper or sources and can be modified (bold, italic, underline) digitally. Carol and King (2007) survey on the important of quality and value of journal article reading indicated that journal article reading has a number of explicit an implicit value to readers and can be capture through survey, usage log, analysis and citation analysis. Readers can measure quality and value of articles by collecting good evidence of the value that the e-journal collections bring for the reader. Value that relates to the purpose of article reading are to inspire new thinking/ideas, improved results, changed focus, resolved technical problem, saved time, faster completion, and collaboration [21].

Porter-O’Donnell guide readers to annotate by questions, comments on actions, comments on something that intrigues, comment that are meaningful, summarize key events, connect idea, discussion, summary of section, remarks, and references for pages or link to other documents. Some other key point need to be annotate before and during reading are title, subtitle, illustrations, text formatting (bold, italic, underline), who, where, when, vocabulary, and important ideas [4]. Another guide for readers are to write a brief definition (as “Def”), write key terms, write any questions or comments, re-read sentences, mark confusing point, list the supporting points for the main concept, and check next to the important passages [4]. Readers also need to identify few annotation elements; a) bibliographic entry, b) authority and qualifications, c) scope and main purpose, d) any bias, e) audience and level of reading difficulty, f) relation, and g) summary comment. An annotated bibliography should contain essential details such as purpose, content and special value [15].

Based on the qualitative study by Catherine C. Marshall, researchers described at least six types of data that are valuable and important for them to keep in order to maintain their intellectual legacy: a) paper sources and alternate versions of publications, b) the PS or PDFs for the published version, c) research code, d) data and logs and the scripts to manipulate them, e) bibliographies and publications that represent closely related work, and email (individual messages and message attachments [6].

The role of annotation in supporting communication is explicit and primary in scholarly environment. Problem identified by Furuta and Urbina was, support for scholarly annotations seems to require attention to issues because scholarly annotation are intended to be public and archival. An implication of their observation is that the design of systems to support scholarly annotation will not achieve their full potential if they simply adopt the parameters of systems that have been designed to support personal annotation [22]. A guided reading with a proper annotation


practices will lead researcher and reader to actively manage their personal reading and annotation collections. Researchers structured or unstructured annotation collections could be keep manually or digitally for further reference, transfer and sharing.

4. Proposed Annotation Classification Model

Based on previous studies on active reading, annotation, guide and value of article reading article, initial annotation classification model is constructed. The proposed model consist of annotation forms link with notation strategies identified in a printed or digital document support by a guided steps, will contribute to a more structured set of notation element. A set of implicit and explicit elements represent a more valuable and meaning to a particular annotation done by a reader or researcher. Further study need to be conducted to identify and collect more annotation elements and classify them into a more adequate and structured context to help researchers along their article reading practices and managing their personal annotation collections (see Fig. 1).

Fig. 1. Initial Annotation Classification Model

References

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researchers annotation collections and practices

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