Digital Annotations: a Formal Model and its Applications

Abstract

We discuss various issues and viewpoints concerning the annotation of digital contents, such as textual documents, images, and multimedia documents in general. The discussion shows how fragmentary the picture is about the annotation and how its definition changes according to the different applicative contexts in which it is used. Therefore, we propose a formal model of the annotation which provides us with a unified and integrated picture on the annotation which takes into account the different viewpoints and uses of it. Finally, we present various possible application areas of the proposed formal model and we introduce the next steps we can undertake by using it as a starting point