Building a decentralised collaborative annotation system for the World-Wide Web

Web page annotation systems enable users to add their own notes to documents and resources hosted on the World-Wide Web, supporting both individual learning and group collaboration. Numerous systems for web annotation have been devel-oped in the past, but to date none have gained widespread use. This dissertation examines the importance of annotation as an activity and its relevance to the Web. Previous dedicated annotation systems are analysed and contrasted with other more widespread forms of annotation. The design and implementation of an experimen-tal, decentralised collaborative annotation system is described, and key challenges are identified for future approaches to building effective, scalable and reusable an-notation systems. Building a decentralised collaborative annotation system for the World-Wide Web submitted by Simon Philip Willison COPYRIGHT Attention is drawn to the fact that copyright of this thesis rests with its author. The Intellectual Property Rights of the products produced as part of the project belong to the University of Bath (se