Taking Scholarly Note-taking to the Web

Michael Buckland
Professor Emeritus
University of California, Berkeley

Ryan Shaw
Assistant Professor
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Scholarly annotated editions of historically significant texts constitute an important foundation for learning and research in the humanities. Scholarly editing requires a sustained investment of highly specialized expertise, but long-term funding is difficult. Existing editorial procedures are still rooted in the pre-digital work practices and the space constraints of the printed codex. A collaboration of documentary editing projects has demonstrated how current Web technology can greatly aid scholarly editing projects and increase the return on investment by making their research notes promptly and fully available through Web publication; gaining efficiency through collaborative, shared access to working notes among related projects; and providing lateral interoperability with other scholarly infrastructure, specifically special collections curators’ notes. This presentation will include a report on these successes, as well as on current efforts to exploit linked data to improve descriptive control over research notes and to enable the creation of “structured” notes incorporating temporal, geospatial, or prosopographical information.

Presentation Slides

http://editorsnotes.org/
http://ecai.org/mellon2010/