Sticky notes for the semantic web

A generalized annotation environment that supports richer forms of description such as natural language and the idea of a question answering interface that allows retrieval based both on the text of the annotations and the annotations associated metadata is proposed.

Abstract

Computer-based annotation is increasing in popularity as a mechanism for revising documents and sharing comments over the Internet. One reason behind this surge is that viewpoints, summaries, and notes written by others are often helpful to readers. In particular, these types of annotations can help users locate or recall relevant documents. We believe that this model can be applied to the problem of retrieval on the Semantic Web. In this paper, we propose a generalized annotation environment that supports richer forms of description such as natural language. We discuss how RDF can be used to model annotations and the connections between annotations and the documents they describe. Furthermore, we explore the idea of a question answering interface that allows retrieval based both on the text of the annotations and the annotations associated metadata. Finally, we speculate on how these features could be pervasively integrated into an information management environment, making Semantic Web annotation a first class player in terms of document management and retrieval