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I am pretty sure there are no technological hurdles left to crowdsourcing everything.

As digital editions and big data projects begin to allow deeper access to their processes, citing the contributions made by those from whom you have lifted already assembled datasets or important cataloguing conventions becomes very difficult, but can be glossed over without consequence in most applications. When these important micro-contributions come from hundreds of people across several disciplines and a range of credentials, the task becomes near impossible and much more important.

Massive sites like Wikipedia have developed conventions (in addition to their official flags, stubs, and citation formats) that discern between contributors who share knowledge on a topic, those who flit about correcting spelling and grammar, and those who seek out citations to flesh out incomplete articles. Is this folksy approach the future? Can and should the value attached to someone who applies professional polish to a scholarly article be different from the workhorse who dropped a mangle of data and conclusions into a public area? Is the artist who created the visualization that makes it all accessible simply an illustrator?

Got me.

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The Open Annotation Collaboration published a data model in February that should be recognized as disruptive. JavaScript Object Notation for Linked Data whose 1.0 specifications landed November 5th (Tuesday) is another in a cluster of W3C standards that show digital objects are beginning to exist as real things that try to completely represent tangible artifacts and not simply a new whizbang-computery way to offer a limp reference to something real.

Markup, I insist, was the necessary jolt to encourage machine readable encoding. XML is a convenient vehicle to bridge relational tools and linked open data(LOD) (or any triple), but the weight limit of RDF-XML has been exceeded. The standards for annotation are necessary for interoperability and the exposure/discovery of LOD, but is also a very useful way to work with offline, local, or private/siloed data.

I am able to share experience with OAC and the manuscript-focused children of OAC, SharedCanvas and IIIF. These standards were emerging as the transcription tool T-PEN was being completed – it has allowed us to include features that were previously unplanned and filled me with healthy discontent at its completeness. Our current project, a tool for the complete creation of digital editions (focusing on manuscripts) makes heavy use of these standards and is dangerously near spawning a few of its own.

I would like to learn about other efforts in annotation, especially in fields outside of manuscripts. What already exists, what is in flux, and has this shift impacted the way you organize data?

At the very least, I would like to debate whether annotation is a fad or there is a real possibility that markup will get out of the way and we may be left with a single pristine artifact that takes the universe as its metadata.

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A group (TECHO) has been meeting recently about cultural heritage organizations  collaborating through technology, especially sharing content, and has also discussed other ways these organizations could collaborate including i.e. STL/MO participation in DPLA.  What are some of the ways organizations could or should collaborate?  Could there be savings from such collaboration, i.e. in shared infrastructure?  What else could be gained from this kind of collaboration?  What obstacles are there?