A Comparison of Paper-Based and Online Annotations in the Workplace

While reading documents, people commonly make annotations: they underline or highlight text and write comments in the margin. Making annotations during reading activities has been shown to be an efficient method for aiding understanding and interpretation. In this paper we present a comparison of paper-based and online annotations in the workplace. Online annotations were collected in a laboratory study, making use of the Web-based annotation tool SpreadCrumbs. A field study was out to gather paper-based annotations. The results validate the benefits of Web annotations. A comparison of the online annotations with paper-based annotations provides several insights in user needs for enhanced online annotation tools, from which design guidelines can be drawn.

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2009
• Where: ECTEL
• Authors: Ricardo Kawase, Eelco Herder, Wolfgang Nejdl
• Keywords: Annotation, ECTEL 2009, Machine Learning, Online Annotation, Paper-based Annotations