1. A collaborative textual annotation tool
Matt Gee & Andrew Kehoe
Research & Development
Unit for English Studies
emargin.bcu.ac.uk

2. Literary Study
How do you study a literary text?
‘Close Reading’: detailed study of short text extracts
down to individual word level.

4. • Text quickly becomes
• (re-)read the text
cluttered with underlining/
• underline important words notes on each re-reading
• make notes in margin • Annotations tied to printed
copy of text
• colour-code
• Annotations not
• draw out themes/motifs
archivable / searchable

5. is on e-texts
In creasing emphas are to
but surpri sing lack of softw
ding.
support close rea
te
Difficult to annota
annotations
Difficult to share
nough for
Not fine-grained e
academic study

6. Our solution:
Web-based collaborative annotation system operating
down to word level.
Demonstration…

8. HIGHLIGHT CLICKED

9. MULTIPLE
ANNOTATIONS

10. MOUSE DRAGGED

11. COMMENT ENTERED
ANNOTATION SAVED

12. ANNOTATION ADDED
TO TEXT, AVAILABLE TO
OTHER USERS

13. ANNOTATION OPENED

14. REPLY ENTERED

15. REPLY SAVED,
AVAILABLE TO OTHER
USERS

16. NEW HIGHLIGHT
COLOUR CHOSEN

17. TAG ENTERED
ANNOTATION SAVED

18. TAG SAVED IN
ANNOTATION

19. TAG CLOUD

20. LOOK UP HIGHLIGHTED
TEXT IN THE OED
(FOR EXAMPLE)

21. INTERESTING, YEAH?

22. Possible Future Features
• Integration with Virtual Learning Environments
– Seamless transition between VLE and eMargin
• Layers of annotation on single texts
– Named layers
– Turn layers on/off
• Annotation of multi-media
– Images, Audio, Video

23. Possible Future Features
• Integrate Corpus Linguistic methods
– Collect texts in a corpus
– Tools
• Concordancing
• Wordlists
• Keywords
• Ngrams
• Collocation
• Import and Export
– XML

24. Future Plans
• Keep developing and keep trialing with end-users
• Explore use in Literature, Linguistics, Acting and
Stage Management
• eMargin transferable to any text-based discipline:
Law, Social Sciences, History, Theology,
Languages
emargin.bcu.ac.uk