Again hypertext format may be suitable for this type of information retrieval. A hypertext system that allows people to add personal or public annotations to the text may be of help. NCSA has an experimental group annotation server running, that can be accessed from Mosaic , their WWW browser. It allows people to attach notes to any document. The notes are stored at NCSA and from then on anybody accessing the document will see a notice that an annotation is available.
Annotations are themselves hypertext documents and can have links and annotations of their own.
The system is popular, but still experimental. It is unclear how the management of annotations should be organized in the long run. Discussions are also part of the study process. Via mailing list or Usenet people can try to compare their opinions and knowledge with others. Most people have the facilities to take part in discussions as long as all that is required is simple text.